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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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Poems and Essays, 



BY 



CHARLES W. HUBNER, 



Author of "Souvekirs of Luther;" "Wild Flowers 
" Cinderella, A Lyric L>rama ; " " Modern 
Communism." 





a- 


'• 




NEW YORK : 




r & DERBY, PUBLISHERS, 




(NO. 21 PARK PLACE.) 




1881. 





M 



Copyright, 1881, 
Bv Charles W. IIudxek. 



SPRINGFIELD PRINTING CO., 
F.I.KCTROTYPERS, PRINTERS AND BINDEF 
SPRINGFIELD, M\SS. 






A 



r 



DEDICATION. 



To the loved ones "gone before," and to those who 
still remain — to Heaven and Home, therefore — in the 
first place, and, in the second, to the generous sym- 
pathy and kindly regard of the general reader, this 
book is dedicated. 

CHARLES W. HUBNER 

Atlanta, Georgia, 1881. 



CONTENTS 



POEMS. 

The Poet, 9 

Beethovejt, 10 

Four Years, 14 

Bernard Mallon, 15 

The Tide of Time 20 

Acrostic, • 22 

The Future.— Goethe, 23 

Deaf — Dumb — Blind, 25 

Julia, 28 

Willie, 30 

Waiting, 32 

Bayard Taylor, 33 

"Die Wacht Am Hhein.^' 35 

Tallulah, 37 

The River and the Book, 40 

Alexander at Gatchina, 47 

Resurgam, 48 

The Legend of St. Fridolin.— Von Scheffel's: Der Trompeter 

von Scekkingen. — Canto iii., 49 

Floaver and Star, 57 

Beauty and Strength, 58 

Fame, 59 

Mother, 61 

Through Night to Light, 62 

Serenade Song, 63 

Wedding Bells, 64 

Necropolis, 65 

The Lesson of the Leaf, 67 



6 CONTENTS. 

Trust and Content, , 70 

We Meet Again, 71 

The Erl-king.— Goethe, 72 

Fruition, 74 

Winter-Morning. — Karl Knortz, 75 

Christmas Carol, -. 76 

Howard Heroes, 78 

New Year's Eve, 81 

" Im Schwartzwald." — From the German, 84 

The Meadow-brook, 86 



POEMS 



THE POET. 

RUE Poet! great or least, 
i^^ How blest is thy vocation! 
Seer, Teacher, Prophet, Priest 

By holy consecration; 
Who can thy sway resist ? 

Who ranketh thee in station ? . 

A lark above the lea 

Her sheer flight heavenward winging, 
A wondrous melody 

Like silvery spray outflinging. 
Thy perfect pattern be 

Poet! in all thy singing. 

Sing true, and sing thy best! 

It is well worth thy doing 
To bid the honest breast 

Beware of Falsehood's wooing, 
To sing of love and rest 

When hate and strife are brewing. 

Behold! the morning light 
Of a New Day is gleaming; 

O Poet! wing thy flight 

To greet its fuller beaming — 

When Wrong shall yield to Right, 
And Truth be more than Seeming. 



BEETHOVEN. 

tN some rare sutnmer night, when shines the face 
Of Heaven serenest, grandly glorified 
By the resplendent nimbus of the stars, 
When heart and soul in winged, impassioned mood 
With a diviner strength uplift themselves 
Beyond the dull, dead dross of common life. 
With manifold subtile threads of thought linked fast 
To the Eternal and the Beautiful — 
In such an hour of pure delight the eye 
Follows the scintillant spheres upon their path 
Thro' infinite space, till dazzled and amazed 
By the incessant splendor pouring vast 
From azure heights and purple depths of air. 
And maze of flashing planets numberless, 
Our vision wearies, and abides at last 
For respite on some " bright, particular star," 
Shining apart in unhedged majesty; 
Some star that seems to us the cynosure 
Of all the radiant orbs that belt the night, 
Because or hope or faith hath hallowed it. 
Or love — these fair ideals of the soul 
Endowing it with a superior power 
To shape our spirits' high imaginings — 
And thus we feel when Fancy's airy feet 
Ascend the heights of immemorial time. 
Thence to survey the pure empyrean 
Where shine the names of earth's immortal sons, 
Names that are blazoned on a thousand shrines. 
Ensphered in radiancy that shall shine on 
'Till Time succumbs to changeless Fate, and yields 
His scepter and his throne to sovereign Death; 



BEETHOVEN. 11 

Illustrious names of men whom Genius sired. 

And God sent forth as ministers of His 

To teach the nations, and illume the world 

With the candescence of their deathless thoughts ; 

As by the glory of a summer night 

Are we o'ercome and dazzled by this view 

Of the uncurtained firmament of fame — 

For such concentrate splendor who may bear 

With unaverted gaze? — Hence, I would fain 

Fix my dim, mortal sight on one alone 

Of all these glowing suns, and offer it 

Homage with reverent heart; a monarch orb 

In fame's empyrean throned — great Beethoven! 

Master of sound's ineffable mysteries! 

How well thy wondrous harmonies reveal 

The human soul's divine, eternal powers! 

Her primal godhood's glory, shining still 

From out the gloom of her mortality! 

Her mighty aspirations! heavenly hopes! 

Which neither time nor death can ever quench. 

Thy wizard's wand of melody can lift 

The veil that shrouds the awful Infinite, 

And break the brazen crust of Sense and Sin 

Coating the suffering soul's celestial fires; 

Beneath thy sway of tuneful ecstasy 

The mind dissolves in holy heat the chains 

That bind it to the murky cells of Self, 

And, spreading wide its strong, imperial wings, 

It soars above the noisome airs of earth. 

To hold communion with eternal things 

In that bright sphere whence first its being sprang. 

O Master, hear! we would invoke thee now! 
Thy sainted Spirit, slumbering in these chords 



12 BEETHOVEN. 

We would awaken with most loving hand; 

Respond to us, and bid the dulcet tongues 

Of lip-kissed instruments, the choric voice 

Of silver-throated singers, and the deep, 

Vast diapason of the organ, speak 

The sweet, symphonious language of the spheres, 

In earthlier form familiar once to thee. 

But now thy mother-tongue, since Death unsealed 

Thy mortal darkened eyes, that thou might'st see 

The Seraphim, thy teachers. 

Unto thee 
With pensive, happy hearts, and heads bowed low 
In silent adoration, we will list 
As to an oracle, interpreting 
Omnipotent Beauty and divine Desire! 
Thou shalt revive our faint and thirsty souls 
With nectar draughts from Heliconian springs, 
And clothe the arid waste of earthly cares 
With the unfading verdure and the bloom 
Of Paradise — O mighty Master, hear! 
And for our sakes quit thou the blessed realm 
Where now thou lead'st the choiring Seraphim; 
Let the high music of their harps be still 
For a few fleeting hours, until thy harp 
Shall in their midst — though throned above them all, 
Resume its strain sublime. 

Hark! sweet and clear, 
Preludial, sense-entrancing melodies 
Swell soft upon the ear, and float away 
Like rosy mists that melt into the dawn. 
Or fall in scintillant showers of ecstasy 
From the aerial' arched and resonant roof; 
Now 'tis the fluting wind of June amid 



BEETHOVEN. 13 

The forest tree-tops playing, in its mirth 
Shaking the murky pines till music rains 
In silvery pattering drops from all their boughs; 
Anon it is the hollow, solemn sough 
Of the sonorous and unfathomed Sea, 
Voicing eternal, awful, infinite Power; — 
Behold! I see a shimmering shaft of light, 
A Glory and a Splendor, like the sun. 
Riving the zenith! The disparted clouds 
Burn with supernal fire — auspicious sign! 
Peal forth, majestic harmonies! Ascend 
O jubilant Song, and make the welkin ring 
With melody! Ah, see! a glorious Shade, 
A heavenly Guest descends to visit us — 
Beethoven's spirit! Crown and honor him 
With loveful hearts, and to the Beautiful, 
The True, the Deathless, consecrate this hour! 



FOUR YEARS. 

yj^EAR wife! four years we've walked together, 
r^ In dreary and in pleasant weather, 

Life's toilsome way; 
Hopes that were flame are dust and embers, 
Bright summers waned to bleak Decembers, 

Night followed day. 

Yet o'er the stormy heights of duty 
Bends the blue sky in radiant beauty, 

The calm stars shine; 
In every valley, dim and lowly, 
Blow buds and blossoms, fair and holy, 

To pluck and twine. 

With steadfast feet that grow not weary. 
And hearts responding true and cheery 

To Love's sweet call, 
We'll climb the golden heights unclouded. 
Or tread the valleys sorrow-shrouded — 

God's over all! 

His arm almighty will defend us. 
His love and mercy still befriend us. 

Till we are dust, 
And life and love more fair and tender, 
In some immortal sphere of splendor 

Shall crown our trust. 



BERNARD MALLON. 

Organizer and First Superintendent of Public Schools, Atlanta, 
Georgia. Died at Huntsville, Texas. 



[Read at the " Mallou Memorial Meeting," Fourteenth Annual 
Convention Georgia Teachers' Association, Macon, May 4, 1880.J 



^^^ULL many a kingly-souled, wise-moulded man, 



If 
^j^ At Fortune's indiscriminative hands 

Receives the purple vestment and the crown 

That designate the sons of Fame, who sit 

High-throned above their fellows; on the fields 

Of battle-slaughter, where the scale of Fate, 

Swift-smitten by the fury-flaming sword, 

This way or that inclines, and so decides 

A nation's glory, or a nation's shame. 

The warrior wins the prize, nor counts the cost; 

Others, sure-poised upon the eagle-wings 

Of eloquence, from white, star-fronting peaks 

Hurling the lightnings of impassionate speech 

Upon the startled world, hear in the loud 

Reverberating echoes at their feet, 

The voice of their own immortality; 

Some, in familiar, life-long intercourse 

With Nature, watching patiently her moods. 

In some auspicious moment from her lips 

Shall hear the pass-word which to them shall ope 

The mighty portals of her Treasury, 

To gather wealth unlimited, and gird 

Her rare gems on their brows; and there are those 

Who, led by Science's resplendent star, 



16 BERNARD MALLON. 

Make pilgrimage in search of Delphic shrines, 

And, finding them, from bleeding feet unloose 

Their sandals gladsomely, and — falling prone 

On holy ground — list to a Voice divine; 

Its oracles to men interpreting 

The world shall call them prophets, and inscribe 

Their nafnes on History's golden pages; some 

Challenge grim Death himself for Fame's sweet sake, 

Accounting life as nothing so they win 

A smile from their proud mistress, as they sink 

Dying in the arena; and a few — 

Souls of rare tenderness and ripest grace — 

Serving at Nature's altars as her priests, 

God's best beloved children, unto whom 

His spirit speaketh a familiar tongue. 

Who, His ineffable glory seeing, sing 

Sweetest to souls of men His praise, and teach 

As poets — hence. Heaven's best interpreters — 

Beauty and Truth — immortal themes that shape 

The spirit of the age to worthiest ends; 

These, ranking highest in the realm of Time, 

Descend to laureled graves, and with their dust 

Fame builds her proudest monuments, and rests 

Upon their lives her own eternity. 

Thou wast not one of these, departed friend! 
Not on such royal roads to fame thy feet 
AYalked wantonly, or. Fate-led and inspired, 
Rushed to the goal, as from a hunter's hand 
The lithe spear, shrilling, shimmers through the air! 
Thy paths were paths of peace; near quiet streams 
Through blossomy meadows flowing, or within 
The green and sheltered valleys, free from storms 
That wreck the pride and grandeur of the world, 



BERNARD MALLON. 17 

Thy safe road lay to honors, bravely won! — 

The clamorous forum knew thee not; the field 

Where thunderous Mars lifts his mailed hand and hurls 

An empire to the dust within an hour, 

Could lure thee not; no blindly-venturous prow. 

That plows disastrous seas in search of shores 

Which, luring still, dissolve in mocking mists, 

Hath ever borne thy fortunes; not at shrines 

In which Divinity doth dwell to touch 

The lips of hoary men with heavenly fire, 

Didst thou bend knee and worship; not for thee 

The statesman's toga, or the poet's bays — 

Thine was an humbler lot, yet none the less 

Great in its noble purposes, full-fraught 

With kindly deeds for all, and in its fruits 

Fine-flavored, wholesome, flawless, beautiful! 

To rule the wanton will of Youth with firm 

Yet a most gentle hand; to sow the seed 

Of knowledge in our children's hearts, and rear 

The tender plantlet till it stood, self-poised. 

Symmetric, fruitful, fair, as God designed; 

To guide the wandering c^ld-soul patiently 

Over the mazy- winding paths that lead 

To the deep fountains of eternal truth. 

Wherein who bathes shall nevermore fear death; 

To teach that he who best obeys rules best. 

When Fate shall thrust a sceptre in his hands; 

To wake the spirit's sleeping potencies 

From their inglorious rest, and bid them leap, 

Alert and Titan-limbed, to bold emprise. 

Making the ages lustrous with high deeds; 

To fill the lissom lily-chalices 

Of blessed Girlhood with the dews that drip 



18 BERNARD MALLON. 

From the Spring-skies of Heaven ; to shield the lark — 

That sports unheeding and with blithesome heart 

In the glad sunshine — from the prowling hawk; 

To feed the maiden soul with holy thoughts, 

God's manna, sent to strengthen innocence; 

With wise delays restraining rash resolves; 

To knowledge adding wisdom, grace to strength; 

With ardent, genial, joy-inspiring love 

Raising the Good to flower and fruit, the 111 

Destroying with the frost of kind reproof; 

Untiring in the Heaven-ordained task 

Of training girls to Woman's sovereign sphere. 

And boys to knightly Manhood — this thy crown 

Of deathless fame, O stainless gentleman ! 

True man! true hero! true philanthropist! 

Thy name was " Great Heart," " Honor " was thy 

shield. 
Thy golden motto: " Duty without fear! " 

Ah, not in alien earth thy dust shall sleep — 

We claimed thee living, and we claim thee dead! 

It were not meet that other hands than ours 

Should place thee in thy sacred sepulchre. 

That other voices than our own should chant 

Thy requiem; nay! rest, where the west wind's breath 

Will bring — with its own tender music blent — 

The voices of the city of thy love; 

Rest, where thine ashes with mute eloquence 

May evermore appeal to hearts that knew 

Thy God-crowned noblehood, and to the lips 

That shall delight to speak thy praises; rest 

Where thou hast builded, with a master hand, 

Thine own imperishable monument 

In words and deeds, and in the hearts of men; 



BERNARD MALLON. 19 

Rest, where with reverent mien and tearful eye 
They, who have Icved thee so, may come to bring 
Affection's blessed offerings to thy grave — 
Spring violets, bluer than a moonless sky; 
Or roses born in golden morns of June; 
Or starry asters, plucked by childish hands 
When Autumn's splendor flames on all the hills; 
Rest, where thy death-dimmed eyes (ere quite their lids 
Had veiled the soulful orbs in dreamless sleep) 
Turned tenderly one sad, sweet, lingering look 
Of memory and regret; yea, dear Heart! rest. 
Rest here until thy cloistered body, robed 
In glorious vestment free from mortal taint. 
Renascent shall arise to shine in Heaven. 



\ V'l 



THE TIDE OF TIME. 

^1 LONG the delta that divides 

The Past, the Present and To-Be, 
How swift, O time! thy current glides 
Toward the black, abysmal Sea 
That men have named Eternity; 

Beyond the utmost range of thought 
Thy fountains lie, thy waters trend — 

Who shall declare when thou wast not ? 
Who will divine when thou shalt end ? 
Who can thy mystery comprehend ? 

Ere the Almighty's fiat swept 

Primeval night from Nature's face; 

Ere out of God's soul Adam leapt, 
Great sire of an immortal race! 
Or Chaos was — thou wast in space. 

The ages come, the ages go; 

Incessant whirl the planet-spheres; 

Sun-bright with weal, or black with wo. 
Sink in thy dismal depths the Years — 
No tittle changed thy tide appears; 

Yea, thou art nature's sepulchre! 
The charnel-crypt of Destiny, 

Where countless worlds already are 
Inurned, from all eternity — 
Thy rueful waves roll tranquilly; 



THE TIDE OF TIME. 21 

Thy surging floods pour heedlessly 
Their ebbless and unending tide — 

What is this worthless world to thee ? 
Its sorry splendor ? puny pride ? — 
Soon over all thy waves shall glide; 

"With spider-threads of specious creeds 
We seek to bridge thy bleak expanse; 

On brittle shells and mouldering weeds — 
Cast by thy surges on the sands — 
Our Babel-tower of Reason stands; 

We play at Life upon thy breast — 
As fools or sages, kings or clowns, 

We strut the roles that suit us best, 
And^toil for food, or fight for crowns — 
The rout thy solemn murmur drowns; 

O thou, that blendest in thy flow 
Immortal woe, immortal joys. 

Holding twixt Heaven, and earth below, 
Life — Death in awful equipoise, 
Why heed we not thy warning voice ? 

For what are fame and honor worth ? 
The pride of pelf ? the pageantry, 

The wanton pleasures of the earth ? 
O'erwhelmed, O Tide of Time, by thee, 
How brief their tinsel splendors be! 



ACROSTIC. 

fLOSE round his soul Heaven-planted germs are 
twining, 
And from his face love's star-bright thoughts are shin- 
ing— 
Ripen, sweet germs, to fruits of deathless youth ! 
Light of his thoughts, shine clear for God and Truth ! 

I see in thee a Violet, in whose eye. 

Drooping with weight of vernal sweets, the sky. 

And fairer glory of the dawning summer lie. 

Rainbow, that spannest the spent storm's cloud; 
Odorous lily that scentest the shroud; 
Star of a sky where but one star can shine, 
Evermore lighting Love's desolate shrine. 



w 



THE FUTURE. 

kHE Future screeneth 
Happy and drear days; 
But ever fearless, 
Though slow it seemeth, 
Do we press forward. 

Heavy the pendent 

Curtain before us. 

Reverent rest o'er us 
The still stars resplendent — 

Beneath us the graves are. 

Behold these and ponder, 

And lo, Shadow haunted 

Are bosoms undaunted! 
The soul with awed wonder 

Feels solemn emotions; 

But from Aidenn bowers 

Call voices of sages, 

Great souls of the ages: 
" The Good and its powers 

Pursue, and neglect not; 

"Here chaplets are twining 

In silence forever, 

To crown their endeavor 
Who work without pining! 

We bid you be hopeful." 

In Carlyle's " Past and Present," (London, 1843,) 
p. 318, this poem of Goethe's is introduced by the fol- 



24 THE FUTURE. 

lowing words, which prove the ardent admiration which 
Carlyle has ever felt, and on every occasion in the 
course of his masterly studies in German literature has 
expressed, for the majestic genius of the author of 
"Faust"; 

" My candid readers, we will march out of this Third 
Book with a rhythmic word of Goethe's on our tongue; 
a word which perhaps has already sung itself, in dark 
hours and in bright, through many a heart. To me, 
finding it devout, yet wholly credible and veritable, 
full of piety and free of cant; to me joyfully finding 
much in it, and joyfully missing so much in it, this lit- 
tle snatch of music, by the greatest German man, 
sounds like a stanza in the grand Road Song and 
Marching Song of our great Teutonic kindred — 
wending, wending, valiant and victorious, through the 
undiscovered Deeps of Time! " 



DEAF— DUMB— BLIND. 

^ShE rain with silvery tinkling feet 
f^^ Patters the lush, resilient grass; 
The winds make music, passing sweet, 

At every tree and flower they pass; 

But not a single ear, alas! 

Though tuned to rapture once it was. 
Here heeds the soft, symphonious beat 
Of the glad rain-drops' twinkling feet. 
Or hears the winsome vinds that greet 

The trees and flowers they pass 
With music bland and sweet, 

A song for every flower and leaf — 

Alas, alas! the Dead are deaf. 

The eloquent tongues of nature teach 
Wisdom divinely, everywhere; 

God's power the flame-browed Tempests preach, 
His love the brook-side weeds declare; 
The crystal palace of the air. 
When the winged choirs assemble there, 
Is resonant with sweeter speech 
Than earthly art can ever reach; 
But sweeter far than all or each 
The sounds of Song's empyrean sphere 
The harmony of Human speech — 

Hark to yon voiceful city's hum! 

Alas, alas! the Dead are dumb. 

A splendid world of Summer bloom 

Enchants the contemplative eye; 

Yonder the russet mountains loom, 



26 DEAF DUMB BLI2s^D. 

The quiet valleys darkling lie; 
Above the gleaming clouds float by, 
And melt where burns the sun-set sky; 
Their thrones the golden stars resume, 
And swift on Twilight's noiseless loom 
Night weaves her robe's resplendent gloom- 

Ah! Heaven itself seems bending nigh, 
And angels glide from tomb to tomb, 

Round each a star-light v/reath to wind- 
Alas, alas! the Dead are blind. 



Mourn not because the blithesome strain 
Of the winsome winds, and the Summer rain 
With its silvery symphony, sound in vain 
On the sealed ears of the heedless Dead — 
Patter the grass, soft-footed Showers! 
Sing, ye Winds, to the trees and the flowers! 
We, the lone living, will listen and — weep. 
Not for the dear Dead, sweetly asleep, 
Who care not for sunshine, who care not for rain, 
Deaf to life's music, and deaf to life's pain, 
For the living — who long for life's surcease, 
For the glory of death and its infinite peace — 
For these, O Heart! thy tears be shed; 
Not for the Crowned Ones overhead. 
The stainless, the painless, forever-blest Dead. 

O Heart! mourn not because the Dead are dumb. 
And can not speak within thy mortal hearing — 

There is no bar Faith can not overcome! 
Lay close thy subtile spirit-ear 
To their mute lips, unfearing, 
And hearken therewith— thou shalt hear 



DEAF DUMB BLIND. 27 

The language that in Heaven is spoken, 
The matchless music of the Seraph sphere; 
Hear, and be not afraid! 

With an immortal speech, 

And eloquence impassionate 

Beyond our fancy's utmost reach, 

We hear them teach and preach, 
These blind, dumb ministers of God — the Dead. 

Mourn not, O Heart! because the Dead are blind, 
And can not see, with fleshly eyes. 
The splendor which around thee lies; 
Ah! in a world to which ours is 
A rush-light, swung in an abyss. 
In dark, foul-vapored darkness dying. 
What wondrous glories they are eyeing! 
Incomparably pure! 
Behold with eyes which sleep shall never sheathe 
With tear-wet lids, which blinding films of death 
Shall nevermore obscure! 



JULIA. 

^^ I^E ASURED by days alone 

%j) Thy sojourn here how brief! 
The dew-drop's hold upon 

An aspen's trembling leaf, 
The spider's filmy thread 
By mighty storm-winds shred, 
Would aptest emblems be 
Of thy life's brevit3\ 

But thy frail life and ours, 

Welded and interblent 
By Love's alchemic powers, 

How boundless in extent! 
If thus life measured be, 

By all it doth involve. 
Only Eternity 

Our lives full sum shall solve! 

Thou wast and ever art 

(Oh! what else couldst thou be ?) 
Of our own souls a part — 

Thrice blest triunity! 
All that was laid away 
With sighs and tears to-day, 
Shrined in a tiny hill. 
Lives in our own lives still — 

A Presence in the soul 

Free from all earthly taint; 

Owning our mind's control, 
Serving our heart's constraint^ 



JULIA, . 29 

Doing at Heaven's behest 

Whate'er is best for these, 
Blessing and being blest 

By mutual ministries. 

To thee we give the dust , 

Of this dear babe of ours, 

O Earth! With loving trust- 
As Spring gives thee her flowers; 

Transmute with tender care 

Her dust to roses rare. 

That e'en her mortal parts 

May blossom on our hearts I 



WILLIE. 

tWEET the voice of the carolling bird, 
In its nest, in the heart of the' forest heard 
When morn's first rays are beaming; 
And fair the skies when over the fields 
Day's silver-footed shadow steals, 
And the star of eve is gleaming; 

But O, my babe! the songs of birds 
What are they to the sweeter words 

I hear thy rose-lips whisper ? 
And fairer to me thy tender face 
Than the sunset sky with its aureole rays 

And its great stars golden glister. 

The blithe birds sing but know not wh}-^, 
And waste their merry minstrelsy 

Upon the heedless hours, 
But in the music of thy tongue 
Ringeth a new Life's morning song, 

Hymning the birth of powers 

Akin to all that is divine, 
August, immortal and sublime; 

In might and beauty growing. 
Till through the night of earthly strife 
A perfect soul, a perfect life. 

Shines forth with star-like glowing! 

And why thy face I fairer deem 
Than that of Heaven, when hill and stream 
Reflect the sunset's glory, 



WILLIE. 31 

Is that because I know I see 
The glory of Eternity 

Brought face to face before me! 

And with this glory of thine eye 
I build a bridge from earth to sky 

O'er which my spirit marches 
By night and day, still back and forth, 
And with me angels come to earth 

Along its lustrous arches ; 

And as we go I breathe my prayers 
That they, through life's unfolding 3'ears, 

May nevermore forsake thee, 
But each be trusty guide and friend, 
Till Christ shall for thy Spirit send 

And back to Heaven take thee. 



WAITING. 

fEAl) ? deadl Nay, darling! thou art only sleep- 
ing, 
As sleeps the babe upon the mother breast, 
And I, who stand beside thee sadly weeping, 

Should smiling bless thy deep and holy rest ; 
My heart, be mute! thy tender vigil keeping — 
What speech hath e'er Love's ecstasy express'd ? 

When wintry Earth the flower-germs still entombeth, 
The Southwind comes, and pleadeth at her gates; 

And though they close against him, still he cometh 
And softly knocks, and sighs, and sings, and — waits. 

He knows that when the Spring her reign resumeth, 
She will restore to him his buried mates; 

Likewise will I — suppressed all vain regretting — 

In patience wait until we meet again ; 
All wintry fear in spring-time hope forgetting, 

My soul holds fast to Faith's celestial chain; 
Let Love in darkness have its earthly setting — 

In Heaven her zenith's glory to attain! 



BAYARD TAYLOR. 

^^HY body with the dead 

f^^^ Sepulchered lies; 
In robe of light arrayed, 

With holy eyes 
Thy Spirit — ;perfect made — 

Looks from the skies. 

No more thy pilgrim prows 

Swim Orient seas, 
Where lotus-scented blows 

The wooing breeze, 
Or dare the polar snows' 

Weird mysteries. 

No more thy master-pen 

In limpid prose. 
Strange sights and scenes and men 

Doth deft disclose. 
Each limned line a gem. 

That gleams and glows; 

No more thy lofty lyre 

Its grand song sings, 
Winging a flight of fire 

With dove-like wings, 
Wooing the soul's desire 

To noblest things. 

A royal heritage 

Thou leavest us, 
Which will our grief assuage, 
3 



34 BAYARD TAYLOR. 

Make less our loss, 
Silver the dark cloud's edge, 
And crown our cross — 

Thy life, thy work, thy name! 

These are not fled; 
A pure and steadfast flame 

Shines overhead — 
The star-light of thy fame, 

O Poet dead! 



DIE WACHT AM RHEIN. 

GERMAN NATIONAL SONG. 

f shout as when the thunders roar, 
Swords clash, and billows beat the shore: 
" The Rhine, the Rhine, the German Rhine! 
Who will protect thee, River mine ? " 

Chorus: Dear Fatherland let peace be thine; 
Dear Fatherland let peace be thine; 
A faithful heart protects the Rhine, 
A faithful heart protects the Rhine! 

An hundred thousand hear the cry, 
And lightnings flash from every eye; 
Firm stands the German sentinel, 
And guards the holy landmark well! 

Chorus: Dear Fatherland let peace be thine; etc. 

The dead of an heroic race 
From Heaven look down and meet his gaze; 
He swears with dauntless heart : " O Rhine 
Be German as this breast of mine! " 

Chorus: Dear Fatherland let peace be thine; etc. 

While still one drop of blood shall blaze, 

Or single arm the sword can raise, 

Or trusty rifle rests in hand, 

No foeman's foot shall touch this strand! 

Chorus: Dear Fatherland let peace be thine; etc. 



36 DIE WACHT AM KHEIN. 

The vow is sworn, the stream sweeps by, 
Our banners proudly wave on high 
Upon the Rhine — no harm be thine! 
We watch and guard the German Rhine! 

Chorus: Dear Fatherland let peace be thine; etc. 



TALLULAH. 

(^O^HEN first this rock-ribbed wild 
^^jj^ The Indian — Nature's child 

And primal lord — 
With footsteps light as air 
Trailing the panther's lair, 

Found and explor'd, 

And heard thy thund'rous roar, 
And saw thy waters pour 

Their fuming flood, 
He, master'd by thy spell, 
Called thee " The Terrible," 

And wondering stood! 

Yea, terrible thou art 

As through the chasms swart 

That wall thee in. 
Full many a fathom deep 
Thy torrents roll and leap 

"With deafening din; 

The granite-bowldered shore, 
The hills, that high and hoar 

Circle thy sides. 
Shake as thy waters hurl, 
With many a madding swirl, 

Their volum'd tides. 

Type of the infinite! 
Of terror and of might! 
Starting thy race 



B8 TALLULAH. / 

/ 

On Nature's natal morn 
With the first planet, born 
To shine in space — 

On earth what countless years! 
« From Heaven what host of spheres! 

Shall fade and fall 
Ere Fate thy power shall chain, 
And night and silence reign 

Supreme o'er all. 

Under thy beetling brow. 
Flushed by the sunset's glow. 

And iris-crown'd 
Speechless I stand, and gaze 
Upon thee, face to face, 

From depths profound — 

Away! nor linger here — 
Death, darkness, woe and fear, 

Shapes that are Hell's, 
Encompass me — away! 
Hark! o'er the frenzying fray 

A sweet voice swells: 

" Be not afraid," I hear 
In accents wondrous clear, 

"For it is I!" 
Immediate peace is mine — 
For soul and sense divine 

That God is nigh! 

He speaketh to the soul 
In roaring floods that roll 
Sheer from the sky. 



TALLULAH. 39 



As tenderly and true 
As in the drops that dew 
The violet's eye; 

Thy vast flood's volum'd mass, 
Yon tiny blade of grass, 

And I — are one 
In God's paternal care; 
Each doth His glory share 

In part and sum. 

Tallulah! mighty one! 
Teacher! thy task is done — 

My soul is fraught 
With thoughts of noblest wing 
O would that I could sing 

As thou hast taught! 




THE RIVER AND THE BOOK. 
I. 

'ITHIN the heart of these eternal hills, 
§^|^ And havened by their blissful peace, I rest ; 
Symphonious music, as of countless harps 
Breathing their tremulous golden harmonies 
Along the pine-clad steeps, salutes the sun 
Rising majestic in the cloudless east. 
The dews which fairies from their tresses shook, 
When from the star-clocks chimed the happy hours 
To elfish revels sacred, shine again 
With added radiance taken from the dawn's 
Illimitable glory; whirring wings, 
Brown, purple, blue, within the brightening gloom 
Of yon wide-arching, bowery branches flit — 
The minstrel-heralds of the coming Day, 
The blessed bird-souls of the world! The wind 
Chanteth a marvelous anthem from the heights. 
Mighty with trumpet-tones of jubilant song. 
Yet strangely blent with jarring sounds most sad, 
Threnetic, weird — a music which repels 
While yet it wooes the ever-curious soul; 
As doth the music of humanity, 
Within whose vast, mysterious diapase 
We listen vainly for the perfect chord. 
Yet listen none the less with willing ears 
To the immortal harmony that soars, 
As one majestic whole, to Heaven at last. 

Around me peace ineffable! Above 

The deep blue domed and everlasting sky. 



THE RIVER AND THE BOOK. 41 

Immaculately radiant! beautiful! 

Uncircumscribed — save -where yon purple peaks 

Circle the central glory like a crown. 

Beneath me lies the waking world, whose voice, 

Soft as a sea-shell's murmur, or the thrill 

Of lute strings trembling at your listless touch, 

Floats faintly up. Impenetrable caves 

Beneath me are, unfathomable depths, 

By the clairvoyant eye of Fancy seen; 

Within their gloom are shrined and sealed, methinks, 

Insolvable mysteries, awful and sublime! 

Myths that were ancient when the hand of God 

Unveiled the face of Day and faint, white flames. 

Slow rounding into shining planet-worlds. 

Flickered and flashed athwart the pallid heavens, 

And Earth enrobed her virgin charms with light; 

Yea, throned within their central glooms I see 

A shadowy form of dreadful majesty, 

The awful Spirit of the under-world! 

There, like the sphynx he sits, his stony lips 

Forever closed to human questioning. 

Lo! yonder, scarce an arm-length's space away. 
Where tall and lithe the quivering rushes stand, 
Amid the emerald moss and succulent grass, 
Mine eyes descry bright glints and wavering lines 
Of opalescent light, that mark the course 
Of waters welling from a tiny spring; 
Swiftly, with many a whirl and wanton lapse, 
The rillet glides from out the strong embrace 
Of the gray-bearded boles that guard its source. 
Dancing and slipping passed the kissing mouths 
Of violets, and the blooms of tangled weeds. 
I could reach out, and with an acorn's cup 



42 THE KIVER AND THE BOOK. 

Prison this prattling Naiad in her cell, 

And interrupt her race ingloriously — 

But why delay the lovely truant ? Down 

Precipitous pathways speeding, lo, at last 

My rillet rests upon the velvet lap 

Of fragrant meadows and brovvn-furrow'd fields, 

No more the elfin fountain of the hills, 

Which with an acorn's cup an idler's hand 

Could have imprisoned in its cradle-bed, 

Or which a chance-bent lily's chalice — nay! 

A rose-leaf, shaken from its stem by flap 

Of passing wing, could from its course have turned — 

But clothed with the dignity and state 

That doth become the youthhood of a brook, 

The stream glides on, through shimmering wolds and 

fields. 
Past bosky nooks whose odoriferous dusk 
Is lit by lucent disks of pendulous flowers. 
Through woods that far diifuse their grateful balms. 
And resonant with choral-singing birds — 
On sweeps the brave and ever broadening stream, 
Bolder the sweep of the translucent tide — 
Into the lordly River grown apace, 
A mighty voice proclaims his manhood's power! 
See where, with many a dallying, coy delay, 
With shining band of silver he enclasps 
A village, on yon willow-margined isle! 
And yonder, miles away, his mighty lance 
Hath pierced a town's invulnerable walls! 
Huge mill-wheels beat his rushing tide to foam, 
And the Briarian armed Titan — Steam, 
With mighty muscles and sharp steely teeth, 
Fuming uprears his front to hold him fast, 



THE RIVER AND THE BOOK. 43 

But with unconquerable potency, 

Each turn and fret but adding to his power, 

The glorious river seaward rolls, the pride 

Of populous states, whom his charmed girdle gives 

Pre-eminence and sceptered sovereignty 

In the great realms of Commerce and of Trade. 

Behold in this the story of a rill! 

Once but a silver thread of dew-drops, spun 

By a blithe fountain-fairy of the hills 

Mid the fern-fronted mosses at my feet. 

It wanders on, by myriad fountains fed. 

And mountain Naiads, who from silver urns 

Pour tribute in its lap; and gathering strength 

E'en from the dews dropped from wind-shaken flowers, 

The rill rolls on, a mighty flood at last. 

Seeking the grander glory of the sea; 

Old Ocean smiles upon the kingly guest, 

And, opening wide his bosom, bids him pour 

His tribute in his dread abyss, and share. 

With him co-equal, through eternity 

His majesty, his beauty, and his might. 

II. 

As in the deep heart of the hills, the spring- 
In secret gathers, drop by drop, to leap 
Into the light at last and serve its fate. 
So in the human heart's unmeasured depths 
Our thoughts distill and gather silently; 
So from the soul's recesses rise our dreams. 
And clothe themselves with radiant loveliness 
Till they become a wonder and a power! 
Thought cannot be repressed, it will ascend 
Into the golden upper-world of light. 



44 THE RIVER AND THE BOOK. 

The gates of Night swing outward to the Day 

When Mind, the subtile seeker, lifts the latch. 

Swiftly the glittering rills of fancy glide 

Away into the world, to quicken it, 

And clothe its wastes with verdure and with bloom ; 

Imagination, gushing from the soul, 

Pours forth her flood of golden harmonies — 

The counterpart of that supernal song 

Attuned to which the heavenly spheres revolve. 

But who can trace the luminous tides of thought 

Down to their secret sources? who make known 

Their devious windings, and the hidden ways 

Wherein they reach their goal ? E'en to ourselves 

Our moods are mysteries, and the birth of thought 

Is veiled from the profaning gaze of men; 

We can but wait in wonder and in fear 

For that celestial messenger — whose hand. 

Unspeakable splendor flashing, shall disrupt 

The curtaining darkness and reveal the light — 

The angel Inspiration! Then the heart 

Will sate its noble hunger everywhere! 

From all terrestrial sources shall outflow 

Pierian waters to delight the soul; 

The whispering winds shall prompt us to sweet 

thoughts. 
The brooks and rivers sing for us, the Sea's 
Infinite mightiness shall make us mute 
With sheer excess of adoration; morn. 
And peaceful evening, and the choiring birds, 
The ancient Spirit of the mountains, throned 
Within the magic circle of the stars — 
Decipherer of the runes of fabled Eld! — 
The sea-like resonance of surging woods. 



THE RIVER AND THE BOOK. 45 

An insect's chirp, the flutter of a wing — 

These shall be as a Voice within the soul, 

An Oracle, declaring holy things, 

Which we must needs — as God's interpreters — ■ 

Wisely proclaim, in human words, to men; 

Aye, the high heart, the nobly fashioned soul. 

Doth from the dark and terrible derive 

A precious lesson, which resistlessly 

Appeals for worthy utterance — from the storms 

Careering perilous on their wings of fire, 

From floods, and earthquakes; from the good and ill, 

The warp and woof of our humanity — 

The wondrous texture which doth make our hearts 

A deeper mystery than the elements 

That constitute the universe and garb 

The heavenly spheres with beauty — from all these 

The quickened soul absorbs sweet sustenance; 

These widen evermore her vision's scope. 

Add to her native powers diviner strength, 

Profounder depth to feeling's splendid tide; 

And as the sea's immeasurable gulfs 

Gather the wealth of countless argosies, 

The golden jetsam of a thousand years, 

So doth the soul become the treasure-house 

Of golden thoughts and princely purposes. 

Of glorious themes and fair imaginings — 

These from the spirit's iridescent deeps 

The plastic hand of Genius takes and shapes 

To an harmonious whole, and lo. The Book 

Hath its celestial birth! a child of Time 

And yet co-heir of Immortality — 

Wherein the crown and scepter of the go4 

Within us reigning are made palpable 



46 THE RIVEK AND THE BOOK. 

To human apprehension! the supreme 

Embodiment of our most god-like gifts — 

Reason and Ideality! twin powers 

That from their everlasting throne, the Book, 

Shall teach and rule the hearts and souls of men 

Till mind and matter (their inseparate tides 

Blent indistinguishably) merge at last 

With the eternal Mind — the Spirit-Sea 

Whose unimaginable glory holds. 

In circling light, the shoreless Universe. 



ALEXANDER AT GATCHINA. 

§LL-FATED scion of the mighty Czars! 
What profit thee thy sceptre and thy crown ? 
The dazzling splendors of thy high renown ? 
Imperial blazonry and bauble stars ? 

Show me in all thy realms a rustic clown 
Would give his hovel for thy gilded bars! 

What wouldst thou give, O terror-haunted King! 
For that with which thy meanest hinds are blest — 
Bright days of peace, and nights of perfect rest ? 

The freedom of a bird upon the wing! 

The love that dwelleth in the humblest nest! 

Or aught that doth make life a blessed thing. 

I pity thee, thou death's-head mask of State! 
Mock Majesty! that tremblest on thy throne, 
And canst not even call thy life thine own; 

Ah! keen and sleepless are the eyes of Hate- — 

Hide where thou wilt, her dogs will run thee down, 

Doomed victim of inexorable Fate! 



RESURGAM. 

/Q[ WFUL Death! inexorable 
^o Pursuivant of Destiny! 
Sometime shall thy face confront me, 
Thy cold hand be laid on me; 

Somewhere shall this mortal vestment 
Holder back to dust again, 

Blent with the forgotten ashes 
Of a myriad other men; 

Be it so! This dissolution 

Shall be wondrous gain for me — 
Somewhere in yon shining heavens, 

I shall live eternally ; 

And my Spirit's voided vestment, 
Changed by heavenly alchemy 

Into robe of radiant glory. 
Sometime I again shall see. 

Come, then, Death, great Liberator! 

Smiling I will welcome thee. 
Bless thy hand, that sets the captive 

Singing soul within me free. 



THE LEGEND OF SAINT FRIDOLIN. 

[From ScheffeVs "■ Der Trovipeter von Soekkingen." — Canto III. 

§WIMS a barque upon the ocean, 
Strange in sail and strange in pennant, 
Speeding to the shores of Gallia, 
And beside the helm a pallid 
Man in monkish garb is sitting. 
Dull and doleful, like a song of 
Lamentation, sounds the language 
Of the strangers, pilgrim prayers 
Blending with the cries of sailors, 
Celtic sounds of ancient Erin, 
Of the Emerald Island, are they, 
And the little vessel beareth 
Fridolin, the Gospel-herald. 

" Mourn and weep not, dearest mother. 
Not with battle-ax or falchion 
Will thy son achieve his glory — 
Other times need other weapons. 

Faith and Love my shield and helm are. 
Unto my Redeemer faithful 
To the heathen I must hasten, 
Celtic blood impels me onward. 

In a dream I saw before me 
Foreign land and foreign mountains, 
Virgin stream with verdant island. 
Almost fair as mine own Erin; 
Thither pointed the Lord's finger, 
Thither now goes Fridolinus." 



50 THE LEGEND OF SAINT FRIDOLIN. 

Forth upon his holy mission, 
With a few devout companions, 
Fared the pious Fridolinus; 
O'er the wide Atlantic waters 
Speeds his ship to Gallia's shores. 
And at Paris sits King Chlodwig — 
Smiling said he to the pilgrims: 

" Have but little use for friars. 
Nor for saints much predilection, 
But since all too close the cursed 
Sharp spears of the Alemanni 
Whistled by my ears at Zuelpich, 
I think somewhat better of you — 
For to the inevitable 
Even kings must bow, and hence I 
Grant you passport and protection 
Wheresoever you may journey; 
In particular I commend you 
To the Alemanni heathens 
Of the Upper-Rhine — rude fellows 
Are they all, and stubborn-headed; 
Change me these to pious people." 

So these godly men pursued their 
Toilsome way toward Helvetia, 
Where began their earnest labor. 
And the Cross' sacred symbol 
At the Saentis' foot they planted. 
And beside the Suabian sea. 
Jura's rugged side descending, 
Fridolin beheld the ruins 
Of Augusta Raiiracorum^ 
Roman walls — the crumbling pillars 
Of the temple of Serapis 



THE LEGEND OF SAINT FRIDOLIN. 51 

Tower'd still above the rubbish 
Cover'd vesture of the valley, 
But the god's cell and the altar 
With the thistle's thorny web was 
Rankly overspun and hidden, 
And an Alemanni peasant, 
Whose progenitor had, maybe. 
Slain the last of all the priests who 
Served the altar of Serapis, 
Had affixed the sacred symbol 
Of the god, a basalt steer's head, 
High upon his cow-pen's gable. 

This saw Fridolin — devoutly 

Crossed himself, and journey'd gladsome 

Onward, up the shining river. 

It was evening; many a weary 

Mile the godly man had wander'd. 

When he came where wide the river's 

Rushing current forked, and midway 

In the green flood gleamed an island, 

Smiling welcome at the stranger. 

(Like a sack upon the water 

It appeared, and hence the natives — 

Little noted for refinement 

In comparisons — had named it. 

In rude phrase, /S'acco?^^wm.) 

It was evening; sweet the larks sang, 

And from out the river flashing 

Leaped the fishes, and the heart of 

Fridolin was filled with gladness. 

On his knees he fell, and prayed he; 

For the island he had dreamed of 

Long ago, lay there before him. 

And he praised the Lord in Heaven. 



52 THE LEGEND OF SAINT FRIDOLIN. 

Doubtless many another son of 
Mortal dust, since then, hath dreamed of 
Some green island, fair and peaceful, 
Whereon it were bliss to nestle, 
And the weary heart might feast on 
Sabbath peace and woodland quiet; 
Many a one with yearning bosom 
Maketh quest, but when his wand'ring 
Feet seem close upon his dream-land, 
Suddenly it f adeth from him. 
As in southern skies the wondrous 
Mirage of the fay Morgana. 

Here, upon a rude raft crossed the 
Pilgrim, and the savage boatman 
Dubious shook his head, and marvel'd. 
Rough the island; in the swampy 
Soil the linden grew and alder; 
On the pebble-covered shore stood 
Ancient willows, and a few rude 
Straw-thatched hovels; there in summer, 
When the migratory salmon 
From the North Sea up the Rhine swam, 
Lurked the Alemanni fishers. 
Spear in hand, among the osiers. 

Undismayed the priest began his 
Labors, and on firm foundation 
Soon his block-house stood completed, 
And the cross of Christ before it; 
When his tiny bell at twilight 
Rang out clear: Ave Maria! 
Far and wide, and at the cross' 



THE LEGEND OF SAINT FRIDOLIN. 53 

Foot the holy man was kneeHng, 
Crowds would gather by the river, 
Shyly gazing at the island. 

Sullen were the Alemanni, 
Once the Roman gods they hated, 
And they hated now the Frank's God, 
Who upon their host at Zuelpich 
Like a thunder-bolt had fallen. 

When on winter nights the master 
Yawned and lolled upon his bear-skin, 
And the female folk were busy 
With their tongues in household gossip: 
How the milk had turned to clabber, 
And the roof was struck by lightning. 
How upon the chase the boar's tooth 
Grievously had fleshed a youngster; 
Then the Alemanni grandam 
Meditatively would answer: 
" No one else but yonder pallid 
Praying stranger on the island. 
Is the cause of these disasters. 
Put your trust not in the Frank's God, 
Put your trust not in King Chlodwig! " 
And they feared and shunned the stranger. 
Once upon a solstice feast-day, 
Landed they upon his island, 
There to drink, as was the custom. 
Out of huge jugs their methegUn, 
And they sought the priest to slay him. 
But on that day he was absent 
On a journey down the river. 
" We will leave the pale-face," said they, 
"i\ memorial of our feast-day! " 



54 THE LEGEXD OF SAi^sT FKIDOLIN. 

And upon the humble hut of 
Fridolinus flew the fire-brands, 
Through the flames rejoicing leap'd they 
Crying: " Hail and praise be Wodan!" 
From afar all this the grandam 
Gladsome saw — and in the fire-glow 
Baleful shone her wrinkled features. 

Fridolin returned, and sadly 
Smiling gazed upon the ruin, 
And he said: " We are made stronger 
By our trials and afflictions, 
And for this, O Lord! I thank thee." 
And anew he built his dwelling, 
Finding a sure way to reach the 
Rude hearts of his neighbors; children 
Hearken'd first, and then the women, 
To his words of love, and many a 
Grim-browed man would nod approval 
As he listened, when he showed them 
How his countrymen in Erin 
Defter, surer, caught the salmon, 
When he sang of olden legends. 
How upon the Caledonian 
Cliffs had hotly raged the battle 
With the Roman, and how Fingal 
Fought and vanquished Caracalla. 
And they said thereat: " A mighty 
God must be the one who sent this 
Man among us, and a good God, 
For his herald's presence brings us 
Luck in fishing." And in vain the 
Grandam groaned her eerie warning: 
" Put your trust not in the Frank's God, 
Put your trust not in King Chlodwig! " 



THE LEGEND OF SAINT FRIDOLIN. 00 

Yea, the rugged hearts he won and 

Willingly, albeit slowly. 

They began to learn the lesson 

That he taught them — how the giving 

Is more blessed than the taking. 

Suffering nobler still than slaying, 

And of all the gods the highest 

He, the holy Crucified One. 

Thus a year passed; 'twas Palm Sunday — 

Round about from all the hillsides 

Came the people, and their skiffs sped 

To the isle of Fridolinus. 

Peacefully they laid aside their 

Swords, and shields, and battle-axes, 

And the romping children pluck'd the 

Violets on the river margin. 

From his cloister, clad in priestly 
Vestment, forth came Fridolinus, 
And beside him the companions 
Who from far had come to meet him, 
Gallus from Helvetia; from the 
Boden See, Saint Columban; 
And the multitude of converts 
Led they to the river, wherein 
They baptized them in the triune 
Name of Father, Son, and Spirit. 
She alone came not, the sullen 
Ancient grandam, to the island 
Of good Fridolinus — saying: 
" Have no need for new gods, now that 
Life is closing; with the ancient 
Gods have I been well contented. 
They were kind alway and gracious, 



56 . THE LEGEND OP SAINT FRIDOLIN. 

Gave me my brave husband, Siegbert; 
When I come to die I would not 
Meet with him again, and all my 
Soul goes out to him in yearning; 
Lay my bones to rest beneath the 
Mistletoe twined pine-tree, in the 
Forest, where the mystic mandrake 
Sprouts in secret; but I wish no 
Crucifix to mark my grave-mound; 
Let its blessing be for others." 
On that very day, however. 
Was the convent's and the city's 
Corner-stone laid by their founder, 
Fridolinus, and apace his 
Work grew up and flourished — greatly 
Was he honored by the people. 
When again he entered Paris, 
And the royal court of Chlodwig, 
At the sovereign's right hand sat he, 
And the island, and much other 
Land adjacent to the convent 
By the gracious King was granted. 
Yea, a mighty Saint became he. 
Do you know the legend of the 
Court-day, and of dead Count Ursus, 
Pictured still in carven image 
Standing at the church's portal ? 
Yea, a mighty Saint became he. 
As their Patron-saint the people 
Of the Rhine-land yet revere him. 
And the peasant on the mountains 
Christens still his first-born " Fridli." 



FLOWER AND STAR. 



<p). 



|)-O^HY should the Flower emulate 
^^^(O The Star's supremer splendor ? 
Why should a blessed lowlihead 

The soul despondent render ? 

For star and flower both fulfill 
Their great Creator's pleasure — 

His plans, His wisdom, power and will, 
Who can conceive or measure ? 

The royal star that shines above 

Is Might in its completeness; 
The lowly peasant flower is Love 

In her divinest sweetness. 

O! wondrous fair, but far away 
And cold yon star is blinking — 

This flower upon my heart I lay, 
Its fragrance grateful drinking. 

Thy lessons, O, my lowly one! 

Are just as wise and tender 
As any taught by star and sun. 

In all their radiant splendor; 

Nay, rather wiU thine artless speech 
To simple minds seem dearer — 

Through humblest things will Wisdom reach 
To God, and bring Him nearer. 

Content thee with thy lowly place. 
Nor dream of stars above thee. 

Thou, too, cans't look on Heaven's face, 
Thou, too, hast God to love thee. 



BEAUTY AND STRENGTH. 

ANOAH'S son, in his blind rage malign, 
L^^ Tumbling the temple down upon his foes. 
Did no such feat as yonder delicate vine, 
That day by day untired holds up a rose." 

And wondrously the differing feats disclose 

"Whence each its separate excellency draws; 
The power of Beauty, emblemed in the rose, 
And that which towering temples overthrows. 
In diverse sequence prove a common cause — 
God's glory, and His wise, unchanging laws. 



FAME. 

" What boots it whether in Westminster Abbey, or under the shadow 
of a village spire, my ashes rest; whether a few years earlier, or a few 
years later I go to my resting place 9 The world will soon forget me." 

— Thackeray. 

^^X^HAT is fame? An air-born bubble 
^y^ c) In a stream ; 
'Tis the evanescent phantom 

Of a dream ; 
'Tis the down of thistles drifting 

On the wind; 
'Tis the flash that for a moment 

Makes us blind ! 

Shake the dew-pearls on yon lily 

From their place, 
And for aye is gone the fashion 

Of their grace; 
From its slender stem dissever 

Yonder flower, 
And thy prize will pale and wither 

In an hour. 

Little time, forsooth, hath Beauty 

Here to live, 
And the life of fame, believe me. 

Is as brief ! 
As the dews exhale, and roses 

Turn to dust. 
So will earthly glory perish, 

And be lost. 



60 FAME. 

He that fame and honors seeketh 

Will pursue 
Thistle-down, and bubbles drifting 

Out of view; 
Yearn for phantoms ever fading 

From the eye, 
Grasp at shooting-stars that glitter, 
Flash and — die. 

On the poor man's grave the roses 

Bloom as fair ' 
As upon the tomb that shrines the 

Millionaire ; 
Stars shine bright, and songsters warble 

Full as sweet, 
O'er a dead king — and the beggar 

At his feet. 




MOTHER. 

'HERE is the light, on earth or in sky, 
S^l c) That is like to the light of a mother's eye ? 
Hath the fairest star we may look upon, 
Or splendor of rising or setting sun, 
Glory to thrill us, or magic to move. 
Like the eye of a mother illumined with love ? 

What's like the gloom, the total eclipse. 

That sudden surroundeth us — sealing the lips 

To grave-like silence, save only the cry 

Of the wounded soul writhing in agony — 

The storm that o'erwhelmeth us, cloud upon cloud. 

When that eye's peerless glory is veiled by the shroud ? 

Are the sweet sounds on earth and in air, 

Or those which we deem that the angels must hear, 

Sweet as the love-words that tenderly come 

From a mother's lips, in the dear old home ? 

Blessing us, guiding us; filling the hours 

With beauty and fragrance, as God fills the flowers! 

What's like the hush, the silence supreme, 
The mid-ocean solitude, vague as a dream. 
That burdens the heart when, forever and aye. 
We turn from her cofiined dust weeping away — 
And O! tell me where hath Love holier shrine 
Than the spot where a mother's blest ashes recline ? 



THROUGH NIGHT TO LIGHT. 

" Durch Nacht zum Licht." 

fO we despair and say — 
Because the skies are gray, 
And surly Winter rules the orphaned hours — 
Sweet Spring is dead for aye ! 
No more her soulless clay 
Shall from the grave arise, arrayed in flowers! 

We know it is not so ; 

Beneath the gloom and snow 

Spring's spirit lives, her blithesome pulses beat; 

Her tuneful streams shall flow. 

Her balmy breezes blow — 

She doth but bide her time, and resteth sweet. 

Perchance beyond the reach 

And cheer of human speech. 

Some hopeless heart in darkness gropeth on — 

Him let wise Nature teach; 

So shall his soul outstretch 

Wings that will waft her, singing, to the sun. 



SERENADE SONG. 

fHOLY Night! O, blessed Sleep! 
^ Safe in your arms my Loved One keep; 
With balm of dreams bedew her eyes, 
And speed her soul to Paradise! 

Inwreathe her golden-shining hair, 
With buds and blossoms pure and fair, 
Forget-me-nots and asphodels, 
Pansies and purple pimpernels; 

Thus, holy Night! thy vigil keep. 
Thus crown my Loved One, blessed Sleep! 
And should she sigh for more, my Sweet, 
O, lay my true heart at her feet! 




WEDDING BELLS. 

[Chorus from "Cinderella."] 

HAT song doth sing, what story tells 
o>^ c) The soul's divinest feeling, 
When from the heart's imprisoning cells — 
Where, waiting long, she listening dwells — 
Love leaps, her heavenly charms revealing! 

Semi-Chorus. 
Hark! Hark! 
The wind, that sinks and swells 
Over the hills and dells, 
Wafts the wedding bells' soft pealing — 
Hark! Hark! 
The wedding bells! 
The merry, merry wedding bells! 

How sweet! How clear 
They chime! O, hear! 

Chorus. 

They seem not far, they seem not near; 
Their music wanders here and there; 

As if in their rejoicing. 

Their transport's wondrous voicing, 

They knew not end or measure, 

Intent to pour their treasure 

Of bliss on every living thing, 
And swing! 
And ring! 
Till all the happy world shall hear 
The glad evangel that they bear, 

The golden song they sing! 



NECROPOLIS. 

^T is all the same 
cQI To the sleepers in the graves, 
Whether on hill and plain, 
Spring's wreathed banner waves, 
Or the lark's entrancing tune 
Pours joy, like a silver rain, 

From the heaven of June; 
Or whether the wind, that kills 
Beauty with icy breath. 
Moans loud on the lifeless heath, 
Or dark on a thousand hills 

Loom shadows of death. 

It is all the same 
To the sleepers in the graves, 
Whether men praise or blame. 
Die freemen, or live slaves; 
They have mastered the mystery 
Of Life— of its joy or pain- 
Yea, the dead are free! 
And their dust even singeth songs, 
In language sweeter than chords 
Of harps which the winds lend words- 
Ah! did we but heed the tongues 
Of these holy hoards! 

There is peace and rest 
With the sleepers in the graves- 
Delightful thought and blest. 
How sweetly sorrow's waves 
Are quieted by thee! 
As the halcyon's soothing breast 



66 NECROPOLIS. 

Calms the clamorous Sea. 
O, Angel of Death! O Time! 
Star-born, inseparate pair! 
When, when will ye bid me share 
The rest and the peace divine 

Of the sleepers, there ? 



THE LESSON OF THE LEAF. 

" We all do fade as the leaf" 

Who scoffs these sympathies 
Makes mock of the divinity within ; 
Nor feels he, gently breathing through his soul, 
The universal spirit. 

fN sun and star light shimmering, 
And fanned by zephyr's silken wing, 
Ah! what a blithe and beauteous thing, 

Dead leaf, wert thou; 
All through the summer's merry time 
Rejoicing still, or rain or shine, 
Upon the bough. 

Resplendent o'er thine airy home 
Arose the sky's majestic dome — 
Had never king upon the throne 

Such canopy! 
The bliss divine of sun and moon. 
Of stars, and song, and fragrant bloom, 

Was given to thee. 

And blew from east, or blew from west, 
Sudden the wanton whirHng blast, 
Thy trembling tender form to wrest 

From its frail hold. 
As for his child a father would. 
The oak the tempest's wrath withstood. 
And held thee and thy sisterhood 
Safe in the fold. 



68 THE LESSON OF THE LEAF. 

So pure, so gay, so fair a sprite! 
Born of the season of delight, 
With all the winsome grace bedight 

It could bestow — 
Ah! who that saw thee in thy prime 
Thought of the fate that would be thine, 
And that the deadly hand of Time 

Would lay thee low? 

How short thy life — how soon decay 
Its light and beauty swept away, 
" To dumb f orgetfulness a prey " 

For evermore! 
Thy dust, blown by the whistling wind, 
In the cold earth will burial find. 
With myriad millions of thy kind, 

Long gone before. 

A wind-blown, worthless thing — and yet 

More costly than a coronet. 

To him who in his heart shall set 

The golden thought 
Which, like a precious jewel, lies 
Beneath th}^ perishing disguise — 
The magic stone the worldly-wise 

So long have sought. 

Like thine our youth is fresh and green; 

Our summer time a merry scene; 

The sky is bright with wondrous sheen, 

Our path with flowers; 
What splendor circles our estate! 
How leaps the heart, with hope elate! 
How little do we dream of fate, 

And wintry hours! 



THE LESSO^N OF THE LEAF. 69 

But well thou tellest, little leaf, 
Life's pride is vain, its glory brief ! 
Cold blow the whirling blasts of grief, 

And lay us low; 
Death comes to palace and to cot; 
Our dust will share the common lot, 
And Oh, how soon it is forgot 

Beneath the snow! 

Learn from the lesson of the leaf 
That death is sure, that life is brief ; 
And foolish he whose ear is deaf. 

And hath not caught 
With subtile sense the solemn sound, 
The perfect harmony profound 
Of Nature, lifting round by round 

The soul to God. 



TRUST AND CONTENT. 

t SWEET Content! O, perfect Trust! 
1 Through you I but the merrier sing 
When days are dark, and soon you bring 
My burdened soul from out the dust, 
As through the garden's icy crust 
The flowers come at the call of Spring. 
Abide with me forevermore! 
And make my soul your dwelHng-place ; 
Endow me with Love's sovereign grace, 
Her strength divine and holy lore. 
Teach me to walk in humbleness 
The pathway of mine earthly days, 
Till, landed on the heavenly shore. 
Time and its trials shall be o'er. 
To God my soul — to you my dust 
O, sweet Content! O, perfect Trust! 



WE MEET AGAIN. 

|HIS is the song the Spirit sings, 
The burden of its glad refrain, 
When, mounting on celestial wings, 

It seeks the source from whence it came. 
When, soaring to the skies, it sings: 
"Beyond the grave we meet again; " 

And though it wounds the loving heart 
To feel we meet on earth no more. 

The loved, from whom we here must part. 
Will greet us on a fairer shore. 

Where we will clasp them heart to heart, 
And live and love for evermore ! 



THE ERL-KING. 



[From the German of Gcethe.'] 

/I^HE Erlkoenig, or Ei'lenhoenig , as it is written in 
roN^German, is the name applied to a personified nat- 
ural power, or elementary spirit, which, according to 
German poetical authorities, prepares mischief or ruin 
for mankind, especially for children, through delusive 
seductions. The term, very probably, signifies " King 
of the Elves." It is asserted in legendary lore, that 
this goblin haunts the " Black Forest," one of the most 
beautiful and picturesque mountainous districts of 
Thuringia, in South Germany. 

The existence of such elementary spirits, and their 
connection with mankind, have, in the earliest times, 
occupied the imagination of the most widely different 
races. 

The Erl-king was introduced into German poetry 
from the sagas of the North, through Herder's transla- 
tion of the Danish ballad of " Sir Olaf and the Erl- 
king's Daughter," and has become universally known 
through Goethe's ballad of the " Erl-koenig." 

Who rideth so late through the tempest wild ? 

It is the father and his child ; 

He holds the boy close in his arm — 

He holds him safely, he holds him warm. 

" My son, why hide you your face in fear ? " 
" Do you not see the Erl-king there ? 
The Erl-king, father, with crown and train — " 
" Son, 'tis the fog-drift on the plain." 



THE ERL-KING. 73 

" Thou darling child, come, go with me — 
In merry sports I'll frolic with thee. 
Flowers brightly blooming thou shalt behold ; 
My mother hath many a robe of gold ! " 

" My father, my father, and hear not you 
What Erl-King hath whisper'd that he will do ? " 
" Be quiet, my child, rest still and at ease — 
In the withered branches murmurs the breeze." 

" Say, dainty boy, willt thou go with me ? 
My daughters will wait on thee royally; 
My daughters nightly gay festivals keep, 
They'll rock thee, and swing thee, and sing thee to 
sleep." 

" My father, my father, and see you not 
Erl-King's daughters in yonder dark spot ? " 
" My son, my son, I see it all — yea. 
Yon hoary old willows shining so gray." 

" I love thee — thy beauty entrances me quite, 
And art thou not willing, then yield to my might ! " 
" My father, my father, he grasjDeth my arm — 
Erl-King, father, hath done me a harm." 

In terror the father rideth with haste. 
His moaning child by his arms embraced; 
The court he gains with toil and dread — 
Upon his bosom the child lay dead. 



FRUITION. 

©ET thy life be like the day, 
^tL Dying 'mid the sunset's roses — 
Fairest when about thy way 
Death's eternal shadow closes; 

Let it be like summer-time, 
Season of supernal splendor! 

Full of promises divine. 

Love, and joy, and music tender; 

Like the autumn let it be. 

When the world's aglow with beauty- 
Rich with golden sheaves, for thee 

Ripened in the fields of Duty. 



WINTER-MORNING. 

[F7^om the German of Karl Knortz.\ 

fWOKE, a dream of deep delight 
Had poured celestial splendor o'er me — 
O, blessed be, thou winter night, 
The land of Eden lay before me! 

The window was abloom with bowers 
Wherein familiar airs were ringing, 

The meadow luminous with flowers, 

And thousand summer birds were singing; 

A murmuring brooklet on its way 
Toward the forest's friendly cover. 

Running its path with prattling play 
Beneath the hedges, bending over; 

Two lovers by the forest's brink 

Reclined, with Love's sweet languor smitten- 
Enough! on yonder panes, I think. 

All of my dream in frost is written. 



CHRISTMAS CAROL. 

ING, happy bells! 
^\3 With links of harmony 
Encircle earth and sky; 

Pour golden floods of music from your cells! 
Ring, happy bells! 

Ring, happy bells! 
With grand, majestic voice, 
Shout to the hills : "Rejoice! 
In purple clad, and crowned, salute the morn! " 

Ring, happy bells! 

Ring, happy bells! 
Let vale, and grove and plain. 
Repeat your sweet refrain : 
"Be glad ! be glad ! to-day was Jesus born! " 

Ring, happy bells! 

Ring, happy bells! 
What joy — for glory shed 
On Bethlehem's manger-bed — 
From out your pealing bosoms trembling swells ! 

Ring, happy bells! 

Ring, happy bells! 
Of chains asunder burst 
That bound us, sin-accurs'd, 
Each jubilant iron tongue acclaiming tells! 

Ring, happy bells! 



CHRISTMAS CAEOL. 77 

Ring, happy bells! 
Ring in the blessed morn 
When Christ, the Lord, was born, 
Whose holy name all other names excels! 

Ring, happy bells! 

Ring, happy bells! 
Till time itself shall cease 
Proclaim the Prince of Peace, 
And laud his name to races yet unborn! 

Ring, happy bells! 

Ring, happy bells! 
Lead with your pealing tongues 
The nations' choral songs. 
That heavenward soar on this memorial morn! 

Ring, happy bells! 



HOWARD HEROES. 

fHE Howard nurse is only mentioned in the papers 
as " one of twenty-five " arriving on such a date, 
or " one of twenty " who are dead. His name nobody 
knows. If he falls, his friends only learn of it because 
he fails to return. In the future there is to be no roll- 
call of a victorious army, with the proud answer to his 
name, " Dead upon the field of honor." He gives his 
life for some plague-stricken wretch, where there is 
none but God to know. — New York Tribune. 

" Dead upon the field of honor " — 
Sweet and clear the legend rings 
Through the music of the ages, 
And the song the poet sings. 
Telling of the mighty heroes 
Fallen in the strife of kings. 

Loud the trumpet wails its sorrow 
O'er the ashes of the slain. 
And the thunder of the cannon, 
And the hoarse drum's hollow strain, 
Voice a nation's saddened triumph 
On the battle's fateful plain; 

And upon the storied column, 
That a grateful nation rears 
As a landmark of its glory, 
Lo ! each hero's name appears, 
And the laurel wreaths that twine it 
Loyal hearts bedew with tears. 



HOWARD llEEOES. 79 

But who mourneth for the heroes 

Who, at Duty's sacred call, 

God -commissioned, calm, undaunted 

Leave the hovel and the hall, 

To confront the yellow cohorts 

Of the Angel of the Pall ? 

Where for these the golden glamour 
Art and Song and Story shed ? 
Pomp and peans, proud orations. 
Solemn requiems for the dead ? 
Or the storied column grandly 
Soaring from the narrow bed ? 

When, at last, this Spartan phalanx — 
In the dread, unequal fray 
With Azrael's ruthless legions 
Battling bravely, night and day — 
Like ripe grain beneath the sickle 
Falling, melt in death away ; 

On the altar of high duty, 
Immolated — laying down 
Life and hope, and every jewel 
Of their being's robe and crown ; 
Dying with the dying wretches 
Of the plague-devoured town ? 

Ah ! they need no storied columns, 
Such as tell the pride of kings ; 
Pomp and peans, proud orations, 
Were for these but idle things — 
Deeds of such immortal splendor 
Soar to Heaven on seraph wings! 



80 HOWARD HEROES. 

Nameless heroes! Noble martyrs! 
How sublime is your repose! 
How you died, and dying conquered 
More than fame, no record shows — 
At the Day of Judgment, angels 
Shall the mystery disclose. 



NEW YEAR'S EYE. 

^OW shall we speed the Old Year out, 
And greet the New Year, coming in? 
With wassail, dance and noisy rout? 

With clinking glass, and banquet din? 

Shall wanton Circe weave her spells 

And ply at will her wizard wand? 

Shall Bacchus bring his satyr band? 

And Folly ring his foolscap bells? 

Back Circe! with thy viper wand; 
Bacchus, begone! Thy brutish band 
With riot shall not curse the land; 
Go, Folly! change thy court-fool dress, 
For garb of sense and soberness; 
On one day of the year, at least, 
Herd not with demon and with beast; 
Approach not with thy Bacchant rout, 

Thy motley retinue of Sin, 
When we would speed the Old Year out, 

And greet the New Year, coming in; 
Far otherwise. Old Year! shall be 
The parting we would have with thee, 
Gray pilgrim to Eternity. 

Turn we the pages of the past, 
And read in silence, first to last, 
The records which the passing year 
Hath writ imperishably there; 
How many a page is blurred with tears, 
And interlined with doubts and fears! 
6 



82 NEAV teak's eve. 

How many a worthless blank appears, 
Mementoes sad of fruitless hours, 
Neglected duties, wasted powers! 
How frequently between the lines, 
We meet with freakful Folly's signs! 
When recklessly we crushed the flowers 
That bloomed, to bless us and to cheer. 
Along the pathway of the year. 

We mind not now the tears, the pain. 
The summer's showers, the winter's rain, 
For but for these much golden grain 
Would dormant in our hearts have lain, 
Which now the reaper's scythe shall know- 
They made the roots of Purpose grow 
Firm 'round the rock-fast soul below. 
And many a fragrant flower arose 
From out the ashes of our woes; 
And as for fear, and sham, and doubt. 
That blot the pages roundabout, 
Time's hand will surely wipe them out! 
But Oh ! these dreadful blanks, that stand 
Accusing ghosts in Memory's land, 
Pointing to wrecks that strew the strand, 
These will not at our bidding go. 
Nor vanish with the winter's snow. 

Gray pilgrim to Eternity! 
Shall we in vain appeal to thee 
To hide these specters from our eyes, 
And leave to us their lessons wise? 
Ah! heed our penitential sighs 
Before thy brief existence ends. 
Our future yet shall make amends — • 



NEW year's eve. 83 

Come, come, Old Year, let's part as friends! 
For lo! upon the threshold stand, 
Faith, Hope and Love, linked hand to hand, 
Bright heralds from the Heavenly Land! 
And I must haste to let them in, 
Already their sweet songs begin: 

A tender, solemn song, to suit the sadness 
That doth befit the parting hour of friends — • 

A blithesome song, of triumph and of gladness. 
To greet the New Year when the Old Year ends. 



r^I 



"IM SCHWARTZ WALD." 

[From the German.] 

T was March. And still the Winter 
c^ Masqueraded; and fantastic 
Garnished with their icy crystals 
Low the boughs hung; here and yonder 
From the ground their tiny heads raised 
Primrose and anemone. 
As out o'er the deluge direful 
Father Noah sent the white dove, 
So the ice-encumbered earth sends, 
Restless, forth her firstling flowerets 
Dubious, deeming the Oppressor 
On his death-bed may be lying. 

From the mountain-ridges rushing 
Cometh Master Storm- wind, blust'ring; 
Downward to the darksome pine-wood 
Hies he, saying: " Friends, I greet you! 
Well you know why I am coming. — 
Faith, because from some one's head I 
Knock a hat oif, people fancy 
I come but to terrify them. 
Tush! that were a pretty business, 
Cracking chimneys, breaking windows. 
Straw-roofs sudden skyward whirling. 
Gown of grandam toss and tousel 
Till she cross herself affrighted. 
Calling on the saints to help her — 
Nay, my friends, you know me better! 
Me, the Scavenger of Spring, who 



., " IM SCHWARTZWALD." 85 

Sweeps away the foul and rotten, 

The worm-eaten tears to splinters, 

Earth from all defilement cleanses, 

That my radiant lord and master 

Worthily his realm may enter. 

I my secret will reveal to 

You, my stately forest comrades, 

Who with front of iron ofttimes, 

And defiant, brave my onset. 

To whose boles I am indebted 

For the blue marks on my skull here — 

Spring himself is coming! and when 

Every sprig and bough shall bourgeon, 

Lark and blackbird carol joyous. 

Warmly on your head the sun shines, 

Then remember me, the Courier 

Of the Spring, whom you to-day see 

Speeding onward in his service." 

But the pine-trees took his homage 
In high dudgeon; from the tree-tops 
Sharp and scornful rings the answer: 
*'Get thee gone, ill-manner'd fellow! 
We desire not thy acquaintance. 
And regret that gentle masters 
Should employ such boorish servants; 
Surly fellow, leave us! Hunt the 
Alps about for nuts, and crack them; 
There, of barren precipices, 
Ask, sir, friendly entertainment." 



THE MEADOW BROOK. 

f meadow brook! that roamest 
) So blithe and free, 
Bearing thy silver tribute 

To the far sea, 
Wilt thou reveal the secret — 

If such it is — 

That giveth to thy spirit 

Its endless bliss? 

On thy green margin musing 

In shine and shade, 
I know that time no changes 

In thee hath made; 
For aye thy placid waters 

Will glide along, 
Still singing, singing, singing, 

The same sweet song. 

Explain the mystic meaning 

Of Life to me ? 
Shall human hearts be never 

From sorrow free? 
Ah, blithesome, bonny rover 

To the far sea, 
Thou makest answer only; 

"I sing for thee!" 



ESSAYS 



Authors, 91 

A Perfect Life,- 101 

The Melancholy Days, 106 

An Age of Progress, 110 

At The Threshold, 114 

"Happy New Year," 119 

What is a Communist? 123 

Child and Poet, 128 

Victor Hugo and Woman's Rights, 132 

The Truth of Fiction, 136 

Immortal, 140 

Macaulay on Democracy, 144 

Religion and Science, 152 

Pot-pourri, . . 156 



AUTHORS. 

"An author ! 'Tis a venerable name ! 
How few deserve it, and what numbers claim ! 
Unblest with sense above their peers refined, 
Who shall stand up, dictators to mankind? 
Nay, who dare shine, if not in Virtue's cause? 
That sole proprietor of just applause." 

'^HAT- erudite, colossal-brained Jupiter tonans in 
f^^c* the realm of English letters, Dr. Samuel Johnson, 
declared that " the chief glory of every people arises 
from its authors." Of course he meant — he could 
only mean — good, wise, pure-hearted and noble-minded 
authors, whose works are wholesome in their effects 
upon the minds and hearts of their readers. He 
meant writers whose pens are a potent force in human 
life for the promotion of virtue in all its forms, and 
who help Civilization in the achievement of whatsoever 
is best, truest and most beautiful, within reach of the 
human soul. In this sense Dr. Johnson's declaration is 
axiomatic. 

Deplorable indeed is the fact, that the high duties of 
authorship are often neglected, and the power of the 
pen made to serve ignoble purposes. How lamentable 
it is that Genius should suffer himself to become the 
slave of Vice, the dupe of Craft, the hired drudge of 
Falsehood! Thus degraded, how deep the shame of 
authorship — how vilely shorn of its glory ! The greater 
the power, the persuasiveness, the beauty of argument 
and rhetoric employed by Genius in his fallen estate, 
the more pernicious will be the work, the more delete- 
rious the influence exercised upon the life of the age. 



92 AUTHORS. 

the darker will be the shadow cast upon the history of 
the people among whom he fulfills his evil purposes. 

With this exception duly considered, the rule, as 
stated by Dr. Johnson, that " the chief glory of every 
people arises from its authors," is irrefutable. Nothing 
can be nobler than the majesty of noble thoughts, filled 
with wisdom derived from heavenly sources, brilliant 
with the inspiration of genius, arranged in harmonious 
order, embellished with the graces o"f language, and 
given to the world, as a precious heritage, in the per- 
manent form of books, which are, as Mrs. Browning 
tersely says: 

" The only men 
That speak aloud for future times to hear." 

Quaint, child-hearted Charles Lamb, whose sensitive 
temperament embraced all nature with the tendrils of 
affection, and to whom the commonest enjoyment of 
the senses was a blessing to be devoutly grateful for, 
speaking of saying grace before dinner, remarked: 
" Why have we not a form of grace for books, those 
spiritual repasts — a grace before Milton, a grace before 
Shakespeare, a devotional exercise proper to be said 
before reading * The Faery Queen ? ' " 

Good books are, under all circumstances, a blessing 
for which we can never be thankful enough. A home 
that is without them lacks one of the main elements of 
genuine domestic happiness. The light that radiates 
from a good book shines with a steady flame; the dark- 
est cloud of misfortune cannot deprive us of its warmth 
and luster; nay, the light becomes brighter by contrast 
with the surrounding gloom. There is no selfishness in 
the counsel given by a good book; it is not influenced 
by the poverty or wealth, the humble or exalted rank, 



AUTHORS. 93 

of him who asks. Good books are the friends of in- 
genuous Childhood, the bosom companions of Manhood's 
ardent prime, the solace of the retrospective heart of 
Old Age. They are the same gems of truth, in the 
palace or in the hut — no matter what their setting may 
be; and, borne aloft by the magical power of genius to 
the pinnacle of some grand, sky-piercing thought, beg- 
gar and prince — looking from that stand-point into the 
illimitable beyond of Time and Eternity — become pro- 
foundly conscious of the fact that, as souls, they are 
equals, and that 

" the rauk is but the guinea's stamp, 
The man's the gold for a' that." 

The author of a good book is a benefactor of man- 
kind. He is a creator of ideas, and ideas are deathless. 

Therefore, he has a just claim upon immortality. 
Greater is he than the victor in a hundred battles; 
mightier than the conqueror of a nation. These men 
overcome the material only; they control bodies; their 
success is confined to the perishable. But the Power 
whose symbol is the pen is limitless;* it controls the 
human will by divine and indisputable right ; its victo- 
ries are the victories of peace, which are worthy of far 
higher renown than the victories of war; its field of 
operation is the inconceivably glorious world of the 
spiritual; it does not destroy bodies — it builds up the 
souls of men. Whatsoever is best in the work per- 
formed by this Power is beyond the reach of decay; it 
is so deeply bedded in the heart of Humanity, that it 
becomes indissolubly a part of it; it is a deathless 
thing, blest of heaven forevermore. Time touches 
only to adorn it, just as the invisible fingers of the 
passing Years clothe with beauty the forms of venera- 



94 AUTHORS. 

ble ruins, hiding the destructive effects of the elements 
with fresh and fragrant .greenery, and adorning their 
rugged fronts, night and day, with the glory of Sum- 
mer blossoms, or the dazzling jewelry of the Winter- 
King. 

Who, then, can refuse to pay homage to this trans- 
cendent Power ? What man or woman, divinely com- 
missioned to wield the scepter of creative Art, will not 
acknowledge the force of Wordsworth's claim for its 
excellence ? In the fine sonnet addressed to the artist 
Hayden, he says: 

" High is our calling, friend ! Creative art 
(Whether the instrument of words she use, 
Or pencil pregnant with etherial hues), 
Demands the service of a mind and heart 
Heroically fashioned." 

It may come to pass, in the course of time, that it 
will be imjDossible to ascertain precisely the paternity 
of a work, or the name and birthplace of the author, or 
to state the particular circumstances under which the 
work was conceived and written. Every authentic 
trace of these things may pass from the memory of 
man, buried under the gray dust of the moldering 
ages; yea, the substance of the work may have wasted 
away to a single and tiny gem in the world's treasury 
of Legend and Song, yet its spiritual effect will be 
intact; with protean adaptability it may have assumed 
a thousand different forms, but in each the light of its 
truth will shine as brightly, the fragrance of the 
thought will be as fresh and sweet, its ability to move 
the heart will be as potent, as in the golden day of its 
birth within the soul of the author. 

The trophies of war are worthless; the flames of 
implacable hate will shrivel the blood-flecked laurels; 



AUTHORS. 95 

the tears of orphans and widows will, eventually, turn 
the wine of victory into the gall and poison of remorse — 
and its monuments are cuf ses in stone. Science would 
achieve her triumphs in vain, but for the preservative 
power of literature, which embalms in humble " print- 
er's ink " the precious results of the discoveries made 
in the arcana of Nature. Brief would be the triumph 
of impassionate oratory, and circumscribed the power 
of speech in thrilling the hearts of a people and direct- 
ing the course of empire, did not the omnipresent pen 
catch the silver-ringing words as they fall from the 
melodious tongue, and rescue them from oblivion by 
fixing the celestial images they portray imperishably 
upon the printed page. 

Talk of the might of imperial sceptres! The might 
of one word is sometimes immeasurably greater, and 
becomes 

" A voice that in the distance far away 
Wakens the slumbering ages." 

Crowns and banners are the trumpery of a passing 
masquerade. They amuse for a time. They cause the 
idle to stare and to wonder; they flatter the vain. 
Ignorance adores them as symbols of divinely derived 
might, and of mysteries that must be dreaded but can 
never be solved. The crafty use them for the accom- 
plishment of selfish schemes of aggrandizement — the 
wise alone despise them. 

Measured by the conceit of lofty station, how great 
is the difference between the bare-footed churl, who 
drives his master's cattle afield, and the crowned and 
purple-robed monarch, sitting upon his throne! In 
death — how equal! Nay, placed in the scales the churl's 
dust may outweigh the monarch's. 



96 AUTHORS. 

Talk of glory in connection with the empty pomp of 
fortune, or the perilous accidency of political exalta- 
tion, or the unsatisfying, cloying fruits of wasted 
riches! Ah, such glory is 

" Figured in the moon ; they all wax dull 
And suffer their eclipses in the full." 

The glory of the mind, only, is true glory. Thought, 
the child of the Soul, is immortal. The sceptre of 
Fame is the pen. Wise Doctor Johnson! well hast 
thou said: " The chief glory of every people arises 
from its authors." 

Variable conditions characterize the trivial as w^ell as 
the important affairs and circumstances of individuals 
and of nations. In the case of the individual this ebb 
and flow in the tide of events may be manifest in a 
month or a year; but in the slowly accumulating his- 
tory of a nation, the development of these changes 
may require a century. 

In like manner genius is subject to changing moods, 
and there is an ebb-tide and a flood-tide in the world of 
Intellect. The literary value of an age is to be com- 
puted by the standard furnished by either of these 
phenomenons. 

It happens in the history of a people that its native 
genius will fall into a state of dormancy. A strange 
lassitude, a baleful torpor, creep over and paralyze the 
forces of intellectual energy; the wing of its spirit 
seems to be broken. A vast and arid expanse of 
mediocrity extends over the entire period, with, per- 
haps, here an eminence, apparently lost in the wilder- 
ness, and there a solitary spring, with its waters of 
truth wasting away unheeded in the sands. 

This uninteresting period may be followed by one of 



AUTHORS. 97 

imposing intellectual activity. Imagination, resuming 
the robes of its celestial rank, will mount to the " high- 
est heaven of invention," there to hold familiar com- 
munion with the Spirit of Beauty in her divinest "forms. 

The history of every civilized nation shows these 
variations of the literary barometer, this decrease and 
increase of the mental forces. A single century may 
witness the gradual decay of a nation's literary potency. 
The crystalline waters of the Pierian fountain may 
gradually diminish in volume, dwindling in their ancient 
channels until shallows only, and barren sands, and the 
crumbling wrecks of former splendor, shall remain 
visible. 

In the succeeding century the fresh fountains of 
Thought will again be unsealed; the transparent and 
sparkling waters of the soul will gush from a thousand 
hidden springs; the swelling current will rush impetu- 
ously into the dry channels, and fill them; the waste of 
sands, the stagnant pools of mediocrity, will disappear. 
The broadening tide, overcoming every obstacle, shall 
again rise and crinkle around the beacon-like monu- 
ments of the past. By the force of rejuvenated intel- 
lect trophies of intellectual success will again be placed 
even upon the utmost verge of the attainable. Genius, 
living in the light and freedom of its royal estate, shall 
again create works, the peer of any that shine down 
upon us from the Walhallas of past centuries; nay, 
that shall be superior even to these, viewed in the 
purer light of the present, and measured by the stand- 
ards of increased experience and broader culture. 

No employment is more congenial to a contemplative 
mind, or more useful in many material respects, than 
the study of the literary annals oi a people. Such a 

7 



98 AUTHORS. 

study will furnish us with means by which the moral 
standing of a people can be accurately tested. More- 
over, the facts of intellectual development, thus ob- 
tained, will direct us no less clearly and significantly 
to the ascertainment of that people's relative political 
position. By this unfailing test the proper place of 
any people in the ranks of the grand phalanx of onward 
marching nations can be determined. Nor are th^ 
results of a wise and consistent study of this kind less 
interesting and valuable when the mind of the student 
occupies itself, exclusively, with the measurement of a 
people's religious and aesthetical progress. 

Let the student of literature enter the libraries of 
our own people with the spirit of a devout learner. Let 
him carefully examine the mental food prepared for our 
people by the press. Let him judge, fairly and criti- 
cally, the taste of the masses, as indicated by the quality 
of the literature circulating among them. By doing 
this he will not fail to arrive at a point whence he can 
satisfactorily survey the entire field of the mental and 
moral culture of the day, and ascertain the influence of 
the above mentioned elements upon the life and man- 
ners of the people. 

Very subtle indeed is the growth of the moral forces 
that successfully uphold the foundation-pillars of a 
State. Equally subtle are the evil influences that oper- 
ate against these sustaining forces, and which, unless 
counteracted in time, or promptly neutralized, tend 
to the gradual subversion of social order and the de- 
struction of material prosperity. 

A clear-headed, deep-thinking observer of a people's 
literature, will hold the key to results which to others 
will be wholly unaccountable events. 



AUTHORS. 99 

In this connection it is proper to say that it is con- 
sistent with both theory and experience to hold, that 
a people who seek satisfaction and pleasure mainly in 
the gratification of selfish purposes ; to whom the ex- 
ercise of the grosser avocations of life is more congen- 
ial than the pursuit of aims which enlighten the mind, 
exalt the soul, and purify the heart ; a people resting 
contented in the worship of Mammon, who would rather 
lay sacrificial offerings upon the dark shrines of the 
Passions, than to sit at the feet of the apostles of 
Truth, or to listen to the sweet and blessed evangels of 
the chaste Spirit of Letters — in short, a people disin- 
clined to admit the unquestionable truth of the maxim 
that a people's chief glory lies in its authors, is one 
that will, of necessity, suffer degradation by such inju- 
dicious contempt for the superior claims of the pur- 
suits of the intellect. Willful blindness to the fadeless 
charms of literature is strong evidence of moral decay. 

Intellect, thoroughly cultivated, with all its splendid 
faculties consecrated to the service of " the True, the 
Good and the Beautiful," is a king v>^hose right to rule 
the world is a divine and unquestionable right. The 
ruler in the Empire of Mind has limitless dominion, 
and the loyal hearts of men are his subjects. He rules 
by wisdom, and commands by love. His throne is the 
earth. The lordly elements, the imperial potencies of 
nature, are his ministers. The mysterious operations, 
the holy and omnipotent influences of the spirit-world, 
obey his call, and unquestioningly fulfill the behests of 
their master. The gems that gleam and flash around 
his forehead, are the crown-jewels of Heaven. He is 
independent of time and of space. Innumerable cycles 
of ages feel the effects of his presence, and own the 



100 AUTHORS. 

plastic power of his will. Eternity alone is broad 
enough, and deep enough, and wide enough for the full 
exercise of his sovereign powers. 

Profound is the wisdom and lofty the sentiment em- 
bodied in the following words of that grand woman, 
Mrs. Browning : " We want the touch of Christ's 
hand upon our literature, as it touched other dead 
things. We want the sense of the saturation of 
Christ's blood upon the souls of our poets, that it may 
cry through them in answer to the ceaseless wail of the 
sphinx of our Humanity, expounding agony into reno- 
vation. Something of this kind has been perceived in 
Art whenever its glory was at the fullest." 

We can not close without uttering the profound con- 
viction of our soul that genius, exercising its functions to 
the utmost, and endowed with every element essential 
to success in authorship, can never achieve permanent 
fame, unless the accomplished work shows, unmistak- 
ably, that the writer is loyally devoted to the cause of 
Truth. No laurel wreath, won in this arena, shall en- 
circle with unfading glory the brow of the victor, un- 
less its leaves have been dipped in the blood of Jesus, 
and the Spirit of Christianity shall bless it with sanc- 
tified immortality. 



A PERFECT LIFE. 

f PERFECT life is a perfect poem — a poem not 
only perfect in form, but also in its spiritual qual- 
ities. A perfect life is like a perfect poem, because 
it represents the crystallization of the subtle ele- 
ments of spiritual beauty, the transparent prism 
reflecting the light of Divine Love, with mellowed 
glory, upon the hearts of men; it is a revelation of 
divine truths; it is the embodiment of whatever is 
Christ-like in human nature. Such a Life-poem is 
scanned by the rules of Eternal Order; its melody is 
the song of the stars, joyfully marching around the 
heavens in everlasting procession. 

In my opinion this is, or should be, the ideal perfect 
life. Where shall we iiad it? Does it exist at ail ? 
There are such lives — buc they are very rare. They 
are pearls of great price, and, like many another prec- 
ious thing in this world, are often found where we 
least expect to find them. We do not look for roses 
and violets on lofty mountain peaks; scant, indeed, is 
the room for beauty and fragrance in a world of fear 
and desolation — we search for them, rather, in sheltered 
gardens, in secluded valleys, in green fields and shady 
woodlands. Nor should we search for the perfect 
human life among those who stand upon the summits 
of human greatness. Their very exaltation deprives 
them of the essential symmetry of character, prohibits 
them from freely discharging the sweet amenities of 
common life, and hardens their hearts against the 
softening influences which are the natural outcome of 
mutual sympathy and dependence. 



102 A PJiKFEOT LIFE. 

The lovely, the serene, the unblemishably pure na- 
ture, united as it invariably is with extreme sensitive- 
ness, shrinks from the pomp and glitter, the noise and 
demonstrativeness, which are the concomitants of 
earthly grandeur. Such a nature prefers the cool twi- 
light of sober meditation to the meridian splendor of 
the turbulent day of our common world. It would 
rather listen to the still, small voice of contentment, 
than to the harsh blare of the trumpet, and the clang 
and clash of arms. It loves to watch the linnet in her 
nest rather than the majestic eagle in his sunward 
flight; it holds fellowship with the brook that sparkles 
and murmurs in the quiet meadow, but flies in dismay 
from the chasm into whose awful depths the torrent 
leaps thundering. 

The poem of a perfect life is the hymn which a soul 
sings in praise of the incarnation of goodness — sublime, 
heroic goodness, that ultimate result of virtue which is 
to be obtained only when human nature has been puri- 
fied by fire from Heaven, and when the heart has con- 
secrated itself absolutely to the service of God before 
the holy altar of Duty. A life thus consecrated seeks 
for no other adornment than that which Christian rec- 
titude can give; it labors gladly for the good of others; 
it despises selfish gain, and the success to be achieved 
by mercenary and questionable efforts; it prefers to 
bestow its charities unknown to the world, even though 
the gift is but a kind word, or a comforting hand be 
laid, with a murmured blessing, upon the head that is 
bowed with pain and sorrow, or a cup of cold water 
be given for Christ's sake. 

The language spoken by such a life is celestial mel- 
ody. In the presence of such a life we breathe the 



A PERFECT LIFE. 103 

fragrance of those fields of supernal bliss that lie so far 
beyond the range of our earthly vision, and within the 
ineffable glory that circles the empyreal sphere. Such 
a life, in its splendid reality, is fairer than the fairest 
vision the poet, " with eye in a fine frenzy rolling " has 
ever beheld rising from the fathomless depths of his 
fancy; sweeter than any dream of Arcadia that may 
come into his soul as he wanders by the margin of pur- 
ling brooks, or while listening to the golden legends 
which are whispered by the spirit tongues of the pines, 
as he sits and watches, with feelings that can not be 
uttered, the burial of the sun in " old ocean's gray and 
melancholy waste." 

What is the substance and sum of such a life? No- 
ble purposes fruited in noble deeds. It means unwav- 
eriQg loyalty to duty — duty to God and to man, terms 
which are indissolubly connected in their meaning; a 
connection like that of the tree's roots with the crown; 
bravely and grandly is the crown uplifted into the free 
light of heaven, the roots, with the tenacity of steel, 
fastened around the heart of the world; the branches 
affording grateful shelter in the heat of the day; the 
fruit sweet and nourishing when the harvest comes. 

A life of this kind, in the loyal performance of its 
duty, may be called upon to crucify the dearest hopes 
of the heart; it may be compelled to see overthrown, in 
shapeless ruin, the sacred temple wherein it has been 
wont to worship its beautiful ideals — Oh, the unspeak- 
able pain of this! Oh, the woful sight of it! Yet from 
the ashes will rise the phoenix, and more and more 
starlike will shine the glory of its moral heroism. 
Never may the world become aware of the cruel, the 
glorious self-sacrifice — what does it matter ? The peans 



104 A PERFECT LIFE. 

of angels shall praise it, and God will make it manifest 
in due time. 

Grander epics are enacted in the humblest spheres 
of life than were ever written in the golden age of 
Romance; and the breaking heart-strings of some 
nameless martyr have made sublimer music than was 
ever evoked from the wonderful world of harmony by 
the witching touch of a Handel or a Beethoven. 

The heart, inspired by such a life, no matter how 
discouraging the circumstances may be by which it is 
surrounded, constantly feels that it is more blessed to 
give than it is to receive. Its gentle ministrations are 
for the benefit of all, and, like the dews that moisten 
and fructify the earth, nourish, sweeten and revive all 
other hearts. It works in silence for the common wel- 
fare. Its greatest happiness is to see the tender blades, 
whose rootlets it nourished secretly, shoot upward into 
the gladsome sunlight, and grow into leafage, and blos- 
soms and fruit, without even dreaming from whence 
flow the potent juices that enabled them to thrive so 
lustily in strength, and beauty, and usefulness. 

Such a heart, under the sunny sky of its spirit, cul- 
tivates the most beautiful flowers of love and sentiment 
for no other purpose than that it may be able to lay 
them at the feet of some loved one as an offering of 
devotion, or that it may be able to scatter them over 
the rugged pathways, and thus make the sharp rocks 
softer to the touch of some weary wanderer's feet. 
There is in the very smile of such a heart the charm of 
inspiration, it gives a new light to the world, and wooes 
us to attempt, with renewed energy, the ascent of the 
star-crowned heights of hope and fame. It can trans- 
mute even our severest afflictions into the fine gold of 
heavenly thoughts and serene resignation. 



A PERFECT LIFE. 105 

O, blessed forevermore be these angel-hearts ! these 
glorious lives ! these living epics of god-like deeds ! 
these tenderest of deathless songs of Life, that breathe 
the spirit of a divinely fashioned humanity, and prove 
to the world that its Creator is a God of infinite love, 
truth, mercy and compassion ! 



THE MELANCHOLY DAYS. 

" /^^HE melancholy days have come, the saddest of the 
njN^ year," sings the poet, and his song is as sweet and 
pathetic as the voice that speaks to us out of the sea 
as we stand, musing and dreaming, upon the shore. 
The moaning of the soul suffering under the immovable 
burden of the chains of Fate, the sublime peans of 
faith and triumph w^hicji, from the lifted lips, wing 
themselves with superhuman heroism into the silent 
heavens of the Eternal Hereafter, are mingled in this 
sad, sweet music of humanity. The poet seats himself 
by the roadside, on the verge of the many-voiced for- 
est, among the drifted leaves and the bright-eyed 
autumn flowers, and proceeds to give us his reasons 
for saying that the season of falling leaves should be 
considered sad and melancholy. The hollow^s are filled 
with dead leaves; the crow, in the tree-top, increases 
the gloom of the day by his dolorous crooning ; the beau- 
tiful sisterhood of the flowers, the gentlest race of earth, 
are in their graves, where so much that is good and 
beautiful lies buried ; the cold November rain patters 
drearily upon their dust ; even the orphan flowfers of 
the summer, that cling so faithfully and lovingly to the 
hill-tops, and hide in the sunny nooks of the forest, or 
that nestle under the sheltering margins of the brooks, 
drop away from the breast of Mother Nature, failing 
to find there eitlier warmth or nourishment. The 
south wind, like a home-sick w^anderer yearning to see 
once more the blessed scenes of his childhood, may 
return for a day, and through the strange stillness of 
the misty fields, and the shivering woods, and along 



THE MELANCHOLY DAYS. 107 

the windings of the shrunken rills, may search for the 
beauty and fragrance once so familiar to him, yet his 
search will be in vain. 

Thus, through the deepening shadows of the passing 
year, the Spirit of Sorrow unveils her pallid face to the 
musing bard, and out of the cold, moist earth rises the 
beloved form of one that was fair and meek as any 
blossom, and who, for a brief time, grew up by his 
side, stately and sun-crowned as the lily, but, alas, as 
frail. The day of weeping comes, the melancholy day, 
the saddest of life, when she drooped with the perish- 
ing flowers, and, like them, was laid away under the 
dust of the dying year — a burial meet for one so pure, 
so gentle, so beautiful. 

But, despite the tender sorrow, the pathetic threnody 
of the contemplative poet's soul, we contend that the 
twilight season of the year offers more exquisite pleas- 
ure, a rarer and more subtile enjoyment, than the sum- 
mer can ever give, and that the phrase " melancholy 
days, the saddest of the year," can not justly be ap- 
plied. 

The governing spirit of the season is rest. Can the 
heart of man place itself under a more blissful spell 
than the feeling that " after life's fitful fever " we 
shall " sleep well ? " When out of the sunset clouds 
lying along the horizon of mortality, the revivifying 
dews of a divine peace are falling upon the weary soul; 
when we feel that the heat, the tumult of the great bat- 
tle called Life, is changing to a scene of the^most 
charming loveliness, tenderly green as the hill-slopes of 
Paradise, calm as its seraph-guarded valleys, and filled 
with the fragrance of the flowers of immortality ? 
When we feel that the open grave before us is the 



108 THE MELANCHOLY DAYS. 

starry portal to the Temple of Eternity, the entrance 
to the Golden City, whose ia>.itly figured outlines we 
may have had a glimjDse of in our most adventurous 
dreams ? 

The past, with its lights and shrdows, sinks beneath 
the horizon of the years behind us; the wonder-land of 
the soul rises before us, out of the veiled glory of a 
strange and incomprehensible To-Be. Hope, love, sor- 
ro'.., ambition, despondency, regret, surprise, the pain 
of the unachieved and the full joy of the achieved — 
every feeling of the heart, every active faculty of the 
mind, lie quiescent, steeped in an odorous languor. 
Buoyed by the deep sea swell of a marvelously majes- 
tic expectancy, our souls are adrift in a star-lit atmos- 
phere of utter beatitude, that is filled with more fra- 
grant farewells than all the roses can sigh to the dying 
Summer, and resonant with sweeter harmony than the 
harps of the autumn woods, or the plaintive lutes of 
the rills, can ever breathe as a requiem over the graves 
of the beautiful flowers. 

High above the monotone of " the melancholy days," 
and beyond the snowy barriers of the year, Nature 
hears the trumpet-calls of the fairy legions of the 
Spring; she sees the mighty hosts of the Sun-queen 
gathering on the eastward shore of time, with waving 
banners and glittering spears. The battle-cry "i?e- 
surganij^ echoes across the glad seas. She wraps the 
robes of sleep around her glorious form, and sleeps — to 
dream of her happy waking. 

So the soul, that can divest itself for a moment from 
the blinding mist of the earthly, will not find the 
autumn of life a sad and melancholy scene. Through 
the rents of our mortality will shimmer the unfading 



THE MELANCHOLY DAYS. 109 

starlight of the Land of BKss; the music of angelic 
\choirs will cause the sighs of sorrow, and the moanings 
of regret, to faint away into an unappreciable whisper; 
the broad and tranquil light of an everlasting day will 
illumine the clouds that overhang the approaching 
Qoom, and transform them into a miraculous apparition 
o^ supernal glory, while clear and triumphant, above 
the saddest farewells that may be breathed, will rise 
the golden harmony of an anthem whose divine refrain 
is — " rest and resurrectio7i I " 



AN AGE OF PROGRESS. 

V^^&X^E are told by an eminent authority in the Chris- 
&^iQ) tian Church that exaggeration, amusement, 
novelty, paradox, is the popular demand of the hour, and 
that a part of this " age of progress " is " to court a smile 
when one should win a soul." This popular demand is 
made the measure even of a rising or a waning minis- 
try, the very article of a standing or a falling church. 
Bringing his accusation against the age home to the 
Church itself, the distinguished writer says: — "The 
young candidate must trim his sails to catch this breeze. 
The old minister, who has lived too late to learn the art, 
is expected to vacate the course. New ideas, new 
methods, new maxims, new doctrines, new discoveries, 
now clamor for a hearing; and the further a man gets 
away from the old beaten track of common sense, the 
more is he likely to be lionized." 

This, certainly, is not a pleasant picture of our age. 
It behooves us to examine it more in detail, to see how 
much truth there is in it, whether the artist has exag- 
gerated his effects, or has kept himself in harmony with 
fact and nature. Our opinion is, that the picture is in 
keeping with the leading features of the times, but the 
causes of which these features are the result, and their 
real value as tokens of the world's progress, appear to 
us to be inaccurately appreciated and represented. By 
inference, at least, modern civilization is charged with 
shortcomings and vices not warranted by the facts. 

New ideas, methods, maxims, doctrines, discoveries, 
rush before the world, clamoring to be heard and seen, 
and people willingly give them audience. The conflict 



\ 



AN AGE OF PROGRESS. Ill 



etween the opposing forces of the new and old engen- 
(^ers paradox, doubt and exaggeration, in form and in 
spirit, on either side. Taking advantage of the melee 
the False raises its brazen front boldly, and the popu- 
lace, led hither and thither by the din of contending 
authorities, is tempted to forget the seriousness of the 
question involved, in order to amuse itself over the 
novel, and frequently the ludicrous, aspects in which 
the combatants show themselves, as well as the subject 
at issue. 

But, after all, the frivolity of the age, leading the 
public mind to vexful dalliance with questions and 
issues in which important interests are at stake, is, like 
beauty, only skin deep ; it does not affect the vast and 
solid structure of truth, which, like the coral pillars 
of continents that have risen from the fathomless 
heart of Indian seas, has steadily grown in strength 
and beauty, and which will continue to expand into 
imperishable forms of glory to the end of time. 

The superficial, the flippant tone of the times, is the 
sea-wave's froth, glittering in ephemeral light, a play- 
thing of the passing winds; far beneath the surface 
mighty currents, invisible to the casual eye, rush on in 
their Heaven-appointed courses, with resistless majesty. 

We believe in the steadfastness of the world's com- 
mon sense; we believe that the thought-currents of the 
rolling years, despite eddies of doubt, whirlpools of 
sensuous amusements, and the attrition of conflicting 
opinions, add silently, immovably, grain upon grain, 
stone upon stone, to the mighty break-water which the 
eternal forces of the Good and the True are incessantly 
upbuilding against the False and the Evil; thus reduc- 
ing, from generation unto generation, the area occu- 



112 AN AGE OF PROGRESS. 

pied by the latter, and . perceivably bringing nearer 
to the yearning human soul the blessed era when 
they shall find no lodgment upon earth; when the 
Spirit of Christ, alone, shall rest upon all things in 
radiant, all-sufficient, all-embracing glory. 

In the grand evolution of the years, in the sea-]ike 
sweep of time toward this shining goal of the future, 
ideas which we seek to express by the word " prog- 
ress," many crude notions, many false conceptions, 
sensational novelties, and disappointing ingredients, are 
upheaved and swept along before our sight; but let us 
strive to be contented with the belief that these im- 
pediments are upon the surface; that they are natural 
sequences of an uncontrollable power, which is continu- 
ously bringing forth good out of evil, although we may 
not be able to trace and understand its purpose and 
tendencies. 

Progress is essential to human happiness; though in 
its minuter aspects, or viewed from stand-points that 
prevent us from surveying the entire scope of the ag- 
gregating centuries, many details of the advance may 
appear incongruous, and discordant notes are detected 
by those who hold the ear too close to that many- 
chorded instrument which men call Life. 

If the common-sense of a " candidate," or of any 
other man, tells him that the popular demand of the 
hour is foolish, it is plainly his duty to oppose that 
demand, and to keep his head and heart deal- of the 
prevailing folly. If he violates his Christian manhood, 
and " trims his sails to catch the passing breeze," he 
will deservedly be swept into oblivion — no onust can be 
maiie applicable, in such a case, to an honest and con- 
scientious maix; those differently constituted ought to 
be swept away — the sooner the better for the world. 



% 

AN AGE OF PROGRESS. 113 

The " old minister," if he is true to himself, and to 
his Bible, will stand unshaken, like a rock, spurning 
the froth and fuming fury of the breakers at his feet, 
with head held high in the pure heavens of Gospel 
truth, and serenely wearing his crown of celestial 
splendor. 

The " church " that is built upon the shifting sands 
of novelty, or popular excitement, is necessarily 2, fall- 
ing church, the ephemera of a whim, the ignis fatims 
of error — let it fall. The church that is built upon the 
Bible stands upon the foundation rock of the universe, 
and God himself is its architect — it can not fall. 

The man willing to forsake the track of common- 
sense, for the sake of being " lionized," and willing to 
jeopardize his holiest interests for such a pitiably little 
motive, certainly commits a terrible mistake, for to 
such as he is significantly applicable the warning ques- 
tion of Holy Writ: " What shall it profit a man if he 
should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? " 
8 




AT THE THRESHOLD. 

'HEN we are about to undertake a voyage to 
5>S< c) some country beyond the sea, upon whose 
shores we have never stood, but which fancy has pict- 
ured to our minds iiT a manner flattering to our wishes, 
though it may not truly represent the reality, we natu- 
rally linger upon the thresholds of our homes to impress 
upon our hearts the precious memory of " the days 
that are no more," and to recall, for a moment, the 
sacred associations which grew out of them, as the 
flowers grow out of the heart of the May-time. Sol- 
emnly meditating upon these hallowed reminiscences, we 
turn to look with sad yet hopeful eyes upon the future, 
whose horizon stretches out before us — an impenetrable 
veil, which the hand of God alone can uplift. With 
feelings that find their best expression in silence, and 
with thoughts which are too holy to be clothed in the 
garb of common speech, we turn away, with lagging- 
steps, from the beloved place, and follow the road that 
shall take us — where ? and to enter upon new scenes 
which, even when viewed through the magically mag- 
nifying lens of the imagination, are scarcely able to 
recompense us for the sundering of the golden chain 
which binds us to the past, and for the loss of the 
heavenly influences of " home, sweet home." 

Somewhat similar to these emotions, although more 
impressive in their effects and more solemn in their 
nature, are the emotions we feel as we stand upon the 
threshold of a new year ; when the angels who have 
lived so long with us in the homestead of the heart, 
stretch forth their hands to bid us an eternal farewell. 



AT THE THEESHOLD. 115 

for " time flies," and they cannot tarry longer with 
their mortal host, no matter how pathetically he may 
plead to be allowed to enjoy still longer the solace and 
the beauty of their presence. 

Time — what a mysterious word it is ! We think of 
it in the abstract, we speak of it metaphorically ; with 
the help of fancy we conceive it to be a something 
that is winged, or personify it in the form of a decrepit 
reaper, with death-dealing scythe, constantly employed 
in mowing down the glory, the loveliness, the pride, the 
warm, pulsing life of the world, and performing the 
work of destruction as ruthlessly as the husbandman 
cutting down the golden wheat-heads in the harvest- 
field, or mowing the fragrant grass in the meadows. 
But in our rhetorical toying with this unpalpable 
thing we call " time," do we duly appreciate it as the 
most awfully real, the most impressively solemn, the 
most sublimely natured element of human life ? 

Time is visible Eternity. The low, monotonous 
click of the clock's pendulum is the audible pulse-throb 
of creation. The hours are marks and emblems of the 
Everlasting. They go and come, and come and go 
with the unvarying regularity which the Divine Will 
has ordained as the physical expression of its own ever- 
lasting harmony. They are the comprehensible atoms 
of that immeasurable cycle within whose periphery all 
that ever was or now is, exists, and which embraces all 
that is humanly conceivable in the physical, moral and 
spiritual creations of Jehovah. 

A subject so sublime as this ought to be viewed 
from this standpoint alone, by creatures endowed with 
reason and enlightened by knowledge. It is not to be 
questioned, therefore, that time is a theme well entitled 



116 AT THE THRESHOLD. 

to the importance here given it, and that it must ever 
remain, by incontestable pre-eminence, the grandest 
subject upon which the powers of thought can be ex- 
ercised. 

The hour when the death of the old and the birth of 
a new year come before us, is certainly a period well 
calculated to impress upon our hearts the inestimable 
value of time. The celestial hue of divine truth is 
most apt then to color the meditations of our souls. 

At such a time the soul seems to be translated into 
a sphere of thought far beyond the reach of her ordi- 
nary flight. She is exalted by some mysterious, 
seraph-pinioned Power, and, from the summit of the 
etherial height unto which she is lifted, she surveys, 
with wondering eyes, an illimitable, Eden-like realm — 
the dream-veiled Land of the Future. 

How busy Memory is, too, at such a time ! See her 
grasping her pilgrim staff, to return over the paths by 
which we have come, and that are already darkening 
under the gathering twilight of time. Why should 
she wish to go back ? Ah ! there are jewels to be 
sought and recovered that dropped unnoticed from the 
heart's crown amid the shock and turmoil of life's 
battle — noio she remembers them, and is anxious to 
replace them, lest they be lost forever. Then the 
graves of dead hopes are to be visited, and to be 
adorned tenderly with roses and forget-me-nots, for 
love's sake ; the pleasant bowers are to be explored 
again where, time and again, we way-worn wanderers 
stopped, for rest and refreshment ; where fragrance 
from the lilied fields of paradise etherialized the com- 
mon air, and we were lulled to sleep with songs and 
harmonies sweeter than any that mortal lips can breathe 



AT THE THRESHOLD. 117 

or earthly harps can compass ; where dreams dropped 
silently into our souls from the star-lands, as into the 
silver cups of the lilies the dews drop from the splendid 
skies of June. Over all this enchanted region, over 
which the sunset of the dying year throws its marvelous 
glamour, Memory walks, demurely and reverently, 
stopping at last to shed regretful tears at the spot where 
the gray Spirit of Neglect holds his doleful court, and 
the withering autumn leaves lie thickest — the grave 
of Lost Opportunities. 

Oh, that we could recall them ! Are they buried 
forever ? 

How beautifully they blossomed once along the path- 
way of the year! In their golden chalices glistened the 
wine of gladness; on their leaves lay the honey-dew of 
contentment; their roots drew sweet sustenance from 
secret and inexhaustible fountains; angels blest them 
and ministered unto them, and urged them upon our 
notice — but we turned awa*y from them, and refused to 
recognize them; our eyes were blinded by sin and 
selfishness; we treated them with contempt as worth- 
less weeds; they died, even as hearts sometimes wither 
and die — from the neglect of those they live for, and 
without whose love and sympathy it is impossible to 
live. And so these little golden Opportunities which, 
rightly used, might have made us happy, and better, 
and nobler, and more potent in soul, and more useful 
to our fellowmen, perished. For these reasons hath 
Memory come to kneel, with remorse and self-accusa- 
tion at the grave that shrines their dust, and to weep 
her useless, useless tears. 

When the New Year shall have crossed the threshold, 
to live with us as our guest, and to record daily iu the 



118 AT THE THRESHOLD. 

great Book of Life our thoughts and our actions, will 
we earnestly determine to treasure the teachings of the 
Old, and to profit by our experiences in the past? 
Will we endeavor to be better, purer, nobler, and in 
all things worthier of the glorious destiny which our 
Father in Heaven has designed for us? Will we 
gladsomely accept the golden opportunities which 
time may offer unto us, instead of neglecting them as 
heretofore, to our loss and sorrow ? Will we devoutly 
employ the energies of mind and body in the pursuit 
and cultivation of the true and the good, and of whatso- 
ever will make life brighter and holier, and which shall 
make the world richer by what it inherits from our 
lives and labors, when our hands and brains are cold in 
death ? In a word — will we really be what we ought 
to be, and can be if we will it so ? May God give every 
heart the strength to do this. Let every one of us 
treasure the lessons of the passing years. Let us profit 
by their admonitions, and become wise by the wisdom 
with which they are willing to endow us. Let us remem- 
ber that nothing whatever transpires in human life 
from which something may not be gained which will 
either benefit the soul, instruct the heart, or widen the 
scope of our mental vision. Thus shall every new year 
" blossom as the rose " for us, and become a fragrant 
and acceptable offering to the Lord of Love and Holi- 
ness when, in due time, it waxeth gray, and becomes 
an old year, and is buried with its innumerable prede- 
cessors in the mausoleum of the Past. 



"HAPPY NEW YEAR." 

;0W like a heavenly benediction these cheery 
words meet us everywhere ! How eagerly the 
heart lends itself to the tender influences that flow from 
the music of the simple phrase ! How we struggle 
with whatever doubts may haunt us that, somehow or 
other, the hope and comfort the words express are not 
for us; that, on the contrary, we alone should feel that 
it is our lot to stand outside of the magic circle of 
light wherein the New Year is throned, banished into 
outer darkness by some inexplicable and untoward de- 
cree of fate. 

Let us reason together, O friend ! concerning this. 
In the first place let me ask why this should not be to 
you — to all of us — " a happy new year ? " Do you 
anticipate trouble, loss, vexation, bereavement ? Are 
you chilled by the shadows of days yet to come, when 
they ought to be radiant with sunshine ? Do you fear 
that the springs by the roadside, with whose sweet 
waters you expected to quench your thirst, will be al- 
together dry, and the trees blasted and bare, within 
whose grateful shadow you hoped to rest in the heat of 
the weary day ? Are you afraid that the loved ones, 
that you now clasp so closely to your heart, and witli 
whom you wish to walk hand to hand, and for many a 
year, over the sunny slopes and through the pleasant 
valleys of this earthly life, will be, ruthlessly, suddenly 
snatched away from you by an invisible hand, never to 
be returned to you ? Do you ask yourself: " Have the 
sorrows of the past gone over me like a storm whose 
fury is spent, or will they come again with increased 



120 "happy new year." 

violence ? Are you afraid the plans you have formed 
will fail; that the goal yoa are striving for will never 
be reached, or, if reached, that the bitter cup of disap- 
pointment will be pressed to your lip, and the olive 
branch and the crown withheld from the toiler ? " 

Suppose either or all of these shadowy portents 
should assume a tangible form, become stern realities, 
and bar your way ? Take courage ! Be not afraid ! 
Believe and have faith ! Believe in the sovereign Love 
that rules the universe; believe in the omnipotent Hand 
that guides the destiny of man; believe in the all-see- 
ing Eye that takes notice of the sparrow's fall, and be- 
holds the floating dust-atoms of a shivered world; 
have faith in the all-supporting strength of the Arm 
that enfolds the sleeping babe, and whirls the ringing 
spheres through the golden ether of the heavens ! The 
almighty Power that cares for these, will also care for 
you — believe and have faith. 

Believe and have faith in the risen Christ, in the 
crucified Redeemer of the world; in the Love that tri- 
umphed over Death; believe in Him whose sinless 
heart took upon itself all the shame and all the agony 
of our fallen nature; who died for us that we might live, 
as the children of our heavenly Father, rehabilitated 
and made joint-heirs of His eternal glory; believe that 
all things work together for good to them that love the 
Lord — believe and have faith ! 

With the splendor and majesty of Heaven round- 
about us, with the impenetrable armor of faith linked 
threefold about our hearts, with the Holy Spirit in our 
souls, with a Christian's prayers upon our lips, of what 
and of whom need we be afraid ? Trials are blessings 
in disguise. To the heart that is free from doubt, that 



"happy new year." 121 

greets them as veritable messengers from Heaven, they 
will before long reveal themselves in all their celestial 
beauty. The ashes, in the urns they brought from the 
skies, will turn to gold-dust; their vesture of sack- 
cloth will be changed to shining robes; the punitive 
rod they bore to smite us with, will become a strong 
staff, to sustain our weary feet in the pilgrimage through 
the Land of Life; the tears that fell upon graves will 
be transmuted into everlasting asphodels, glistening in 
the morning light of Paradise. 

Ah ! why should we be so unwilling to undergo the 
ordeals which our Father has ordained in wisdom and 
iii love-^that we may fill the measure of our human 
capacity, that our hearts may grow in strength and 
virtue, that our lives may become more and more beau- 
tiful, that our souls may be full fledged when the time 
shall have come for the heavenward flight ? 

Manfully, cheerfully, humbly and prayerfully, let us 
meet the coming years, and face the responsibilities 
which they may bring us, in all things deporting our- 
selves like men and Christians. We are as children 
whom a parent has sent upon an errand to a distant 
city, knowing not what may befall us on the way, but 
implicitly trusting in the wisdom of the Father who 
hath sent us on our journey, knowing that it is done 
for our good, and that he will watch our progress with 
tender solicitude. 

We shall find the evil-threatening shapes that con- 
front us on the road vanish " like the baseless fabric of 
a dream," or see them changed to guardian angels; the 
dark shall be made bright; the singing birds by the 
wayside shall fill our souls with the benediction of 
song; beyond the passing cloud we shall see the stead- 



122 "happy new year." 

fast, blessed sun; cooling waters shall well from tlie 
dust at our feet; sweet odors from the blossomy fields 
of Peace shall come to us on the morning and the 
evenino- winds; the trees shall stretch forth their great 
arms lovingly, to give us shelter and rest when the noon- 
time heat has overcome us. 

We know that the invisible Hand which taketh 
away, hath given, and 'will continue to give. We 
know that the crown follows the cross; that the seed 
must be buried in the earth, and sleep and moulder for 
awhile, before it can rise again and ripen for the har- 
vest; we know that this is true, also, of the body, laid to 
sleep in the bosom of mortality, to be quickened and 
raised again in a more glorious form in the Eternal 
Hereafter, when the morning,gates of the Resurrection, 
"on golden hinges turning," shall open to admit a re- 
deemed world! Let us labor and wait, do our duty — 
and leave the results with God. " He doeth all things 
well." 

The last sun of the dying year is sinking beyond the 
hills into the tideless, shoreless ocean of the Past. The 
shadows of night are slowly closing over the valleys of 
our humiliation and sorrow. Like the shrouded dead, 
the shrines of our sacrifices loom ghastly in the uncer- 
tain twilight. But, see! over all, high in the east, like 
the morning star, shines the Cross of Calvary, its orbed 
splendor heralding the New Day! Let us turn to greet 
the newcomer. Let us journey toward it, as the wise 
men of yore followed the beckoning glory of Bethlehem, 
leaving behind us, in the hands of God, the hallowed 
dust of the past, retaining only its precious memories, 
its deathless hopes. 



WHAT IS A COMMUNIST ? 

" What is a Communist 1 ' One who has yearnings 
For equal division of unequal earnings ; ' 
Idler, or bungler, or both, he is willing 
To fork out his jDenny and pocket your shilling." 

Ebenezer Elliott. 

i|^HE " Corn Law Rhymer," in his pithy, pungent 
f^^^ way, puts in a nut-shell the reply to the question 
in our caption. A learned work on the subject in a 
half dozen volumes would not state the truth as clearly 
as Elliott's simple stanza. In his day the meaning of 
Communism was as well understood as in the present 
day, although its baleful influence on politics and social 
life was not as pronounced then as now — an influence 
which has caused Pope Leo to designate Communism, 
in all its forms, as " a death-dealing plague that is 
creeping into all fibres of human society." 

If we add to Elliott's pen-picture a torch, a dagger, a 
pistol, a gibbet — we will have the model Communist of 
the present day. Nor will it be necessary to go to 
France, Russia, Germany or Italy for a specimen. The 
city of New York will furnish perfect samples — that 
brilliant model of American Communism, for iijstance, 
who in an address delivered in that city quite recently 
said, alluding to Queen Victoria: "I would guillotine 
her. I would have a court convene at Hyde Park, con- 
sisting of twelve Irish paupers, who would try her life, 
and cut off her head." This bloodthirsty individual 
was loudly applauded when he said that the Nihilist 
platform is the noblest that has ever been put before 
any party! 



124: WHAT IS A COMMUNIST? 

It is not necessary to discuss at length the traditions 
of Communism, or its ancient and modern history; nor 
the minute shades of difference which philosophers and 
critical political economists have made the subjects of 
entertaining study. We have no inclination to under- 
take the task of tracing the high-wrought speculations 
of Plato; no desire to describe the political and social 
Eden created by that amiable and erudite optimist, 
Sir Thomas More. We will not endeavor to enter the 
golden gates of the " City of the Sun," nor venture to 
sail in the dream-shallops of fancy in quest of the ethe- 
rial shores of the " New Atlantis" and of "Oceana." 
This entertaining and harmless quixotry of the mind 
can be safely left to the lovers of quaint and antique 
lore, and to the curious scholar, as a relaxation from 
the toil and strain of scientific studies. 

The matter to be soberly considered is the profound, 
the portentous, the omnipresent problem presented by 
the revolutionary Socialism of our day; particularly 
that form of it which, under various disguises, incul- 
cates the Satanic creed of ultra-communism. As a 
whole it is the personification, the embodiment of what- 
soever is most wicked and bestial in human nature. It 
represents the Murderer whose bloody hand clutches at 
the throat of society. It is the Vandal, whose torch 
is held constantly in readiness to do its ruinous work. 
It is the Savage, whose dagger and pistol are busy now. 
It is the Ghoul, whose ghastly presence stalks at noon- 
day and at midnight through the streets of our capitals 
and emporiums, muttering curses and seeking for prey. 

We allude to that form of Socialism which has 
already used force of arms to attain its objects ; whicli 
covers streets and squares with infuriated mobs ; which 



WHAT IS A COMMUNIST? 125 

shoots and hangs ; which looks upon the man who has 
saved a few hundreds or thousands of dollars out of 
his earnings as a thief ; of that Socialism which- has 
driven God from its heart, exalted Brutism to the 
throne of murdered Conscience, and expunged justice 
and decency from its social Code. We mean the bar- 
barians whose battle-cry is " Rule or Ruin," and their 
leaders, who are attempting to undermine society and 
to debase civilization by the promulgation of plausibly 
constructed but inevitably evil theories through the 
press and from the platform, thereby indorsing and 
insidiously aiding the more vulgar but more directly 
effective argument of the knife and the bludgeon. 

Conviction forces us to assert that another revolution 
in France will see the Communist tiger leap from his 
lair in Paris, as strong and as fierce as when he first 
lapped the blood of his prey ; that Germany will yet 
have its Reign of Terror, and Berlin its j^etrolleiise and 
its horrible fusillading ; timt the stately streets of impe- 
rial St. Petersburg will be blocked with the debris of 
barricades, and the windows of its palaces riddled with 
bullets; that rich and aristocratic England will clutch 
her money-bags in mortal fear, in desperate attempts to 
escape impending disaster ; and that a second Pitts- 
burg massacre, the locality changed perhaps to Chicago 
or New York, may again disgrace the annals of even 
this flourishing new Republic of ours. 

No man w^ho makes an intelligent use of his eyes 
and ears, and properly exercises his judgment, can fail 
to perceive that baleful influences are at work, corrupt- 
ing the people accessible to false doctrines, political and 
social ; the low creed of Materialism, the doubting, 
mocking, Mephistophelian spirit affected by many in the 



126 WHAT IS A COMMUNIST ? 

higher ranks of life, and distinguished for scientific 
attainments, has not failed in its deleterious influence 
upon the lower ranks of the race in weakening the 
vital powers of public and private virtue. The hetero- 
geneous nature of our population offers a fine field of 
operation to the discontented and rebellious elements 
so characteristic of our times. 

It is an indisputable fact that no government, espe- 
cially in a republic, can exist without a respect for law, a 
love of order, and adherence to the supremacy of both. 
Deprive us of these, and we crumble to pieces under 
the rotting decomposition of riotous anarchy, or we 
rivet the chains of some master-spirit of evil around 
our craven souls. There is no question of this result. 
To the peaceful enjoyment of liberty there must be the 
sense of security; the quiet feeling of the absolute pro- 
tection of the cordon which law and order have draw^i 
around. Deprive men of this sense of security, let 
them feel that the law is incapable of protecting them, 
and they take up arms for their own preservation, and 
liberty, and justice, and security leave the land. 

AYe do not maintain that the weight of our Ameri- 
can civilization, the powers of law and order fully 
awakened by the increasing danger, and the divine 
majesty of justice, will not triumph over this evil force 
when the deadly conflict shall come. We believe that 
justice, truth and wisdom will win. We believe that 
the star of this splendid republic, however obscured it 
may be for a time, will shine on in steadfast glory while 
time shall last, because to doubt this would be to admit 
the possibility that the progressive, divinely-decreed 
civilization of the world is a complete failure, and that 
anarchy and barbarism is the predestined condition of 



WHAT IS A COMMUNIST? 127 

our race, but we assert that the final struggle for suprem- 
acy will be tremendous ; that it will test our repel" 
lant powers to the utmost; and that the contest will 
shake our social and political fabric from center to cir- 
cumference. We earnestly insist that we ought not 
to underrate the strength of our enemy, nor allow our 
supineness to increase his means for doing mischief. 
Communism is a hydra-headed power. It is endowed 
with more suppleness of limb and ferocity of dispo- 
sition than the fabled dragon was alleged to be pos- 
sessed of. This more harmful modern dragon has been, 
temporarily, forced back into its lair in the " Cave of 
the Furies." The beast has been baffled — but he will 
come again. He is watching for a favorable opportu- 
nity. He is biding his time. Let us see to it that for 
him this time shall never come in the United States of 
America. 



CHILD AND POET. 

Oj)-\^E believe that the tenderest and purest chord 
^^J^ of all that are struck in praise of earthly 
things by every true poet, is the chord devoted to the 
eulogy of childhood. How touching are the strings 
that vibrate to the music of its joys and its sorrows, 
its hopes and its fears! How sweet the notes that in- 
terpret the thoughts of children's hearts! How earn- 
estly we listen to the tones that recall to our memory 
the speech so familiar once to our own ears! It is a 
language that is never forgotten, though the clasli and 
the war of the world may have marred the blessed 
harmony of those perfect days, and scarcely recogniz- 
able are the echoes that float faintly over the sunrise 
hills of our being, to vanish at last, forever, in the 
dark valley of the west where our open graves are. 

Because children occupy an intermediate place in 
creation between the earthly and the heavenly; be- 
cause they are the best interpreters of nature; because 
of their innocence and unquestioning faith; because 
they are freshest from the loving hand of the Creator, ' 
and have still roundabout their souls the fragrance be- 
longing to immortal spirits but recently taken from the 
realms of beatitude; because of these and other equally 
potent causes, children have always occupied a high 
place in the hearts of the poets. To these priests of 
Nature children have been springs of joy and inspira- 
tion. There are but few bards whose works will not 
verify our statement. 

Even Goethe, whom many persons believe to have 
been the embodiment of cold, skeptical egotism, and 



CHILD AXD POET. 129 

aristocratical hauteur, an intellectual glacier, vast, re- 
splendent, but chilling in lofty indifference to his sur- 
roundings, and callous to the sweet heart-thrills of our 
common humanity, speaks of the little ones with words 
of melting tenderness, and in the sweet spirit of Chris- 
tian humility. Speaking of his personal intercourse 
wdth these souls in the bud, he says: 

"Of all things upon earth, the children are near- 
est to my heart. When I see in the little creature 
the -germs of all the virtues and of all the strength 
which it will require in after life; when I see in its ob- 
stinacy all the future stability and firmness of youth, 
and in its childish mirthfulness all future good-humor, 
and the ability to glide smoothly over the rough 
places of life; when I see all the germs of character 
still unperverted — I continually repeat to myself the 
words of the Great Teacher: ' Unless ye become as lit- 
tle children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of 
Heaven.' " 

No poet of our age, however, has imbibed more 
copiously of the spirit of childhood then our own 
Quaker bard, Whittier. How tenderly and reverently 
his muse unveils for us the hearts of our Httle ones! 
Certainly, he loves children; he reveres them both for 
what they are and for what they suggest — simplicity, 
purity, innocence, proximity to God — every- quality 
the lack of whose ennobling influence we feel as we 
become hardened and seared in the fierce struggle with 
the world, and the early fragrance and freshness of 
heart and soul pass away, like the sweetness and beauty 
of a flower. 

We are always strongly tempted to measure the 
worth of a poet in the elements calculated to make him 
9 



130 CHILD AND POET. 

popular — that is to say, in the power he possesses to 
write himself into the homes and hearts of men — by 
the manner of his treatment of child-themes; by the 
spiritual insight he has of a child's soul; by his power 
in depicting the color, the glow, the ethereal light and 
shajile of that mysterious world which moves within the 
orbit of a child's eye, and whose light comes from 
sources so much nearer to the star-lands of Love and 
Peace than are the inferior sources from whence we de- 
rive our spiritual illumination. Only a true poet, , ex- 
ceptionally gifted, can do this; it requires the utmost 
perfection of art — simplicity without barrenness; 
strength finely proportioned with grace; perspicuity; 
originality of conception; thought sanctified by true 
emotion — in a word, the rare power that is able to 
send a noble thought from the heart straight into and 
through the heart of another, as an arrow speeds from 
the bow to the mark. In this excellence we believe 
Whittier to be unrivaled among the poets of our day. 
He is always frank, manly, sincere, direct, always 
loving, fatherly. How touching and true, how full of 
wisdom and gracious philosophy, are these two stan- 
zas from his pen: 

We need love's tender lessons taught, 

As only weakness can ; 
God hath his small interpreters ; 

The child must teach the man. 

We wander wide through evil years, 

Our eyes of faith grow dim ; 
But he is freshest from his hands, 

And nearest unto him. 

Ah, yes, what might lies slumbering in the weakness 
of a child! What a world of love it can bear upon its 

V 



CHILD AND POET. 131 

small shoulders! How men who rule the world, and 
women who rule the men, are all ruled, and willingly 
too, by the little despots of the nursery! How illim- 
itable the power whose seat is in the cradle! What 
sceptre is more potent than a baby's hand! 

Yes, children are interpreters, teachers. " Of such 
is the Kingdom of Heaven." Fresh from the hands 
of God, and O! so near to him, why should they not 
be able to teach us what we are all so apt to forget — 
love, gentleness, charity, sincerity, purity, faith. Do 
we ever fully realize how hard it is to break the faith 
of a child ? Ought we not to become as one of these 
little ones ? A more precious boon than this could not 
be bestowed upon us by our heavenly Father. 



VICTOR HUGO AND WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

^jfylCTOR Hugo is by nature a romancer. He 
oJ^Xs delights in the vague and the extravagant; in 
effects that shock us by their unexpectedness; and in 
the lavish application of intensely brilliant colors upon 
every subject he brings within the range of his great 
but singularly erratic genius. No matter how plain and 
practical the question to be considered may be, it seems 
to be impossible for him to dispose of it without sub- 
jecting it to a heating race through a wonderful laby- 
rinth of blazing rhetoric, epigrammatic in form, but 
frequently strained beyond the utmost verge of com- 
prehension. This peculiarity is illustrated by a paper 
of his addressed to the " French Society for the Ame- 
lioration of the Position of Woman," in his role as 
champion of the cause commonly known in this country 
as " Woman's Rights." 

" Man," says Hugo, " has been the problem of the 
eighteenth century — woman is the problem of the nine- 
teenth; and to say woman is to say child, that is to 
say, the future. The question thus put appears in all 
its gravity. It is in its solution that the supreme social 
appeasal lies. Woman can do all for man — nothing for 
herself. The laws are impotent to make her so feeble 
when she is so powerful. Let us recognize that feeble- 
ness and protect it; let us recognize that power and 
direct it. There lies the duty of man; there lies also his 
interest. I do not tire of saying the problem is put; it 
must be solved. Half of the human race is outside of 
equality; it must be made to re-enter. It will be one 
of the great glories of our great century to give the 



VICTOR HUGO AND WOMAN S RIGHTS. VM) 

rights of the women as a counter-balance to the rights 
of the men — that is to say, to put laws in equilibrium 
with the customs." 

To us it appears inconsistent to say that man was 
the problem of the last century, and that woman is the 
problem of the present. If men were problems in the 
eighteenth century, they are problems still, just as the 
women are, and so they have been always. He fails to 
say what the problem is, or was, and by whom solved, 
or to be solved, if solved at all. He is clearer in his 
statement as to the woman problem of our own day. 
He asserts that one half of tlie human race (the women) 
are outside of equality, and must be made to re-enter. 
In what respect are women outside of the law ? In 
social law or the law of the courts ? 

We maintain that woman is supreme in society. She 
enforces custom and, consequently, has under her con- 
trol the laws that govern society in manners and in 
tastes. If these are wrong, or inadequate to the pur- 
poses for which they were designed, she has no one but 
herself to blame. If she is as powerful as Hugo says she 
is, and the truth of this statement we are not in the least 
degree inclined to doubt, what is to prevent her from 
exercising that power to suit herself, and to establish 
the condition she may consider to be the essential one ? 

In social life woman is the highest tribunal of appeal, 
to which all questions affecting the rights and privi- 
leges of society must come for final decision, and which 
she can decide, or ought to decide, in conformity with 
the social and aesthetic Code which civilized mankind, 
by common consent, has left to her judgment and in- 
terpretation. 

If he means that she is debarred from equality before 



134 VICTOR HUGO AND AVOMAn's RIGHTS. 

the courts, we reply that the rights of men are fre- 
quently subject to influences that savor quite as much 
of inequality, and that are, apparently, as distinctly 
inconsistent with the fundamental principles of justice 
and right which ought to regulate every transaction 
in law. 

Laws should not be based upon customs, because 
customs are subject to the influences of rival opinions 
and ever- varying shades of taste and culture; frequently 
the only reason for their existence at all rests in their 
adaptability to certain contingencies. Laws should be, 
and they are supposed to be, founded upon primal 
principles of Right; they should be kept in their native 
purity, just as they came from the hand of God, and 
they should be enforced in accordance with the noblest 
powers of enlightened wisdom. The enforcement of 
such laws cannot interfere with the interest of any per- 
son, male or female; the evil lies in perverting them, 
to the inconvenience and injury of all classes of society. 

There is no reasonable ground for antagonism be- 
tween the sexes in law. We maintain that where such 
antagonism exists in Christian civil government, botli 
sides are blamable — men, because they obstruct the 
legitimate course of law, and, for selfish purposes, pre- 
vent its just and equable application, and women are 
censurable for the sin of omission, in that they fail to 
exercise their power to mould society to a nobler shape, 
and do not infuse into its composition the elements of 
their own superior nature. 

We claim that woman possesses this power, and can 
exercise it whenever she earnestly and consistently 
determines to do so. As mother she has the God-given 
power to mould the character of her son; as wife she 



VICTOR HUGO AND WOMAN^S EIGHTS. 135 

• 

has potent, though it may be silent, influence over 
her husband ; these sons, these husbands, are the law- 
makers, and their actions as legislators will be governed, 
in a very great degree, by the influences of Christian 
wife and motherhood. Who can estimate the blessed 
inspirations of a home where the divinity of a noble 
woman's heart, and the love of her pure spirit, are the 
protecting and guiding penates ? 

To assert that men, who have from childhood grown 
up under such influences, and who by the force of habit 
have become strong in character, and by instinct loyal 
to virtue, are capable of making and enforcing laws 
that are derogatory to womanhood, and inconsistent 
with the spirit of integrity, honor, and truth, is to assert 
a proposition repellant to our sense of justice. The 
statement cannot be reconciled with the facts of mod- 
ern progress and civilization. 



THE TRUTH OF FICTION. 

.0 suppose," says a distinguished American writer, 
ro^^ " that fiction could permanently appeal to so 
many classes of mind if it were only fiction, is to sup- 
pose an absurdity. Fiction is most powerful when it 
contains most truth ; and there is but little truth that 
we get so true as that which we find in fiction. So long 
as history is written by partisans, and science by theo- 
rists, and philosojDhy by hobby-riders, the faithful 
studies of human life, as we find them in the best nov- 
els, are the truest things we have ; and they cannot 
fail to continue to be the source of our favorite knowl- 
edge, our best amusements, and our finest inspirations." 

We have here an apotheosis of fiction, but the rea- 
sons for it are not good ; the argument is somewhat 
superficial, and the conclusions not at all satisfactory. 
It is hardly possible to trace the complex reasons that 
cause so many people to prefer the reading of fiction to 
any other sort of reading. However, we seriously 
doubt that people read novels principally for the truth 
they may contain, rather than for their effects upon the 
fancy, and for the amusement they afford in hours of 
leisure. 

According to this popular writer's theory a didactic 
novel, having for its object the demonstration and illus- 
tration of Truth, ought to be the one that would take 
the firmest hold upon those who delight in the reading 
of fiction ; it should have indisputable claims upon imme- 
diate and permanent popular favor. The records of 
our public libraries, and every-day observation, do not 
indorse this statement. The didactic, philosophical 



THE TRUTH OF FICTIO"Nr. 137 

novel makes but a sorry showing, as to the number of 
admirers, compared to that of the average novels of the 
day, the writers of which seek to amuse only, and who 
furnish echoes and shadows principally, instead of 
original sounds and living substances. 

If " fiction is most powerful when it contains most 
truth," would not that potency have attained its per- 
fection if all the fiction were eliminated, and the pure 
truth only given ? In that case, would not fiction cease 
to be fiction ? If truth is stranger than fiction, as well 
as greater, why not give it the preference, and allow 
fiction to occupy its proper secondary place? 

The world would be indeed in a sorry plight were it 
compelled to rely upon the so-called " truth " of fiction 
for its stock of genuine truth. 

As a pleasing means, and in a subordinate way, 
fiction may be made useful in the illustration of a truth, 
but it can never take the place of truth — this would be 
confounding the means for the end. It should also be 
remembered that very finely spun, elaborated, and flow- 
ery fiction may become a source of positive evil, by 
burdening a truth with profuse ornamentation until it 
is almost hidden from sight ; occasionally we may catch 
a glimpse of the shimmering gem through the beauti- 
fully woven but bewilderingly complex language in 
which it is dressed, but the mind of the reader is too 
much occupied wifh unraveling the meshes of rhetoric 
to devote proper attention to the search for and appre- 
hension of the hidden truth. Hence the impression of 
truth upon the heart and the mind, when it is thus 
disguised and hampered, is necessarily faint and un- 
satisfactory. 

Thb argument of the writer to whom we allude is. 



138 THE TRUTH OF FICTIOX. 

furthermore, weakened by the fact that it is not the 
outcome of an unbiased and disinterested mind, but is, 
in reality, the plea of a partisan in the cause of Fiction 
in novel form. He attempts to subordinate history, 
science, and philosophy, in thei-r most precious attribute 
— truth — to his beloved pet. His zeal inconsiderately 
hurries him into pronouncing anathema upon himself 
in his character as a popular novelist; moreover it 
causes him to forget that history, written by partisans, 
and science by theorists, and philosophy by hobby-riders, 
neither deserve nor receive lasting public favor; on the 
contrary, it is a fact that, in proportion to the extent 
they may deviate from truth and faithfulness, they will 
•receive punishment, finally, in the limbics fatuorum 
prepared for them from the beginning of literature. 

To this devoted panegyrist of Truth, and able advo- 
cate of Fiction and of studies of human life, we desire 
to suggest the fact that he has strangely overlooked 
the fountain-head of all truth — the Bible, in his enu- 
meration of the sources whence truth is best to be 
derived. Can it be possible that the unquestionably 
extensive range of his mental vision can be, in one 
direction, so completely obstructed by the gorgeous, 
cloud-built temjDle he has erected in honor of his fa- 
vorite goddess — Fiction, as to hinder him from seeing 
nothing beyond it, or above it, worthy even of mention 
in a discussion that involves our dearest and most 
important spiritual interests ? 

Would he find truth in its simplest, purest and divin- 
est form, and human life portrayed most minutely and 
faithfully; would he wish to know the sources of all 
knowledge; would he wish for that inspiration without 
whose fresh and quickening breath the thoughts and 



THE TRUTH OP FICTIOl^. 139 

aspirations of men are but withered leaves, and their 
most ambitious efforts cold and ephemeral as the froth 
of the sea, we would direct him to the Bible. In that 
" Book of books " is embodied all that the human soul 
can conceive of the beauty and majesty of truth, and of 
the power of the knowledge that springs therefrom. 
Let him say, earnestly and devoutly, that " the truest 
things we have " are to be found there, and tliere alone, 
and not in the novel, in Fiction, to which he has given 
unmerited apotheosis. 



IMMORTAL. 

fHERE is a solemnly true and tenderly beautiful 
stanza in Stedman's fine poem, read by him at 
the unveiUng of Horace Greeley's memorial bust in 
Greenwood cemetery — it is this: 

The star may vauisli — but a ray, 

Sent forth, what mandate can recall ? 
The circling wave still keeps its way 

That marked a turret's seaward fall ; 
The least of music's uttered strains 

Is part of Nature's voice forever ; 
And aye beyond the grave remains 

The great, the good man's high endeavor. 

It is a solemn truth that the good only are the truly 
great. It is a tenderly beautiful thought that good 
deeds and noble purposes live, spread and flourish to 
the end of time. They partake of the immortality of 
the soul from whence they came; they are its divinest 
attributes. " Goodness," as Marlowe says, " is beauty 
in its best estate." 

Whatsoever is great and good is not only an immortal 
heritage of blessing to the possessor, but, in increas- 
ing measure, it blesses also all who come into contact 
with him. The diffusiveness of goodness is one of its 
most admirable qualities. Penetrating to the very 
core of life, coloring the character of nations, goodness 
becomes an irresistible power; genial and healthful as 
the sunlight, it vivifies the dormant virtue of the 
world, illumines with its serene effulgence the hearts 
and homes of men, and prepares a path of glory for 
coming ages. 



IMMORTAL. 141 

Greatness, not based upon virtue, is unsubstantial; 
such greatness is 

"like a cloud in th' airy bounds, 
Which some base vapors have congealed above ; 

It brawls with Vulcan, thund'ring forth huge sounds, 
Yet melts and falls there whence it first did move." 

It may rise and glitter for a generation, for a cen- 
tury, for a thousand years, but there is no warmth in 
its distant rays, no fructifying element in its garish 
light. Many may admire it because of its brilliancy, 
none, however, will love it for the good it has done, or 
will ever be able to do. It is the symbol of selfish 
endeavor, not the beacon-light by wliich the hearts of 
men steer over the ocean of hfe, to the shores of the 
eternally True and the divinely Beautiful; therefore its 
orb shall gradually vanish from the sight of the gener- 
ations of man, to become a scarcely noticed speck in the 
skies of histor}^, sought by the curious, perhaps, when 
they wish "to point a moral or adorn a tale." 

The fair imagery, the chaste metaphor of Stedman's 
lines portray, on the other hand, that greatness which 
gives man a place nearer heaven; the greatness that is 
built upon goodness; the character-structure whose 
architect is Virtue, and whose graceful proportions are 
adorned with every attribute of an exalted manhood 
and womanhood. Good greatness is, indeed, a star 
whose ray cannot be recalled when once its light has 
beamed forth, at the fiat of Jehovah, to illumine the 
universe. It is a circling wave in the unfathomable 
sea of life, indicating its cause by illimitable effects; 
circle upon circle, in luminous succession, the rippling 
waters shimmer along the surface of being, from the 
shores of time to the shores of eternity; the last, faint 



142 IMMORTAL. 

tremor in the tide may, long ago, have passed beyond 
the scope of our vision, but it shall never pass out of 
the reach of God's all-seeing eye; nor shall the music 
of our metaphorical wave ever cease to thrill the listen- 
ing heart of humanity. It shall speak eloquent!}'' of 
the gentle hand that first gave it force and motion, 
lonor after that hand has turned to dust in an undistin- 
guishable grave. 

If, according to the poet's genial optimism, the 
least of uttered tones becomes an appreciable part of 
Nature's music, of that music which the stars sing so 
majestically in their celestial choir, and the Avinds 
breathe so lovingly to the bashful flowers, and which is 
to man medicine for the wounded soul, how immeasur- 
ably more pertinent becomes the figure when applied 
to " the still, small voice " that comes from the great, 
loving heart of him who ministers to the wants of his 
fellow-men, and promotes the high aspirations of hu- 
manity — from any one whose aim in life is to do good, 
and whose days are filled with the light and sweetness 
of love, truth and mercy! 

Ah! gladder music than this no angel has ever sung; 
grander harmony has never been heard this side of 
Heaven! Goodness speaks in a language intelligible 
to all the world; it is an Order whose mystic grip is 
the grasp of an honest hand; its signs need no other 
interpretation than the glance of a free and sympa- 
thetic eye; it demands, primarily, a frank, guileless 
and Christ-like heart. It has the power of transmuting 
itself into the gold and silver of charity and good-na- 
ture, and to make these a common currency among 
men. Under the figure of music it becomes a syno- 
nym of something sweeter and purer even 4 than 



IMMORTAL. 143 

Nature's music, for, in the compass of its melody, 
g'oodness leaves no room for disturbing discords; there 
are no plaintive under-tones that tell of pain and of the 
mutability of earthly things — on the contrary, it is a 
soothful, a blissful psalm, winged like an eagle to bear 
the spirit God-ward in exalting praise; quickening the 
emotions, and inspiring the soul with superhuman im- 
pulses, and glorifying life with the light of immor- 
tality. 

Not only be^^ond the grave does the good man, 
great in holy deeds and liigh endeavors, receive* the 
reward reserved for him from the foundation of the 
w^orld, and promised him as a divine legacy in the 
Word of God, but on this side, also, is he honored and 
recompensed. In the grateful hearts of living men, in 
the reverence of successive generations, his monument 
is erected, and it shall stand in pristine beauty and in 
unimpaired solidity, w^hen empires and thrones shall 
have passed away forever, when Fame shall have forgot- 
ten their trophies, and History shall search in vain for 
their records. Good deeds, in their very essence, are 
immortal — they are the offspring of Truth, and Truth 
is God. 



MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. 

§OME years ago Lord Macaulay wrote a series of 
letters to Hon. Henry S. Randall, author of " The 
Life of Jefferson," in which the eminent historian, 
scholar and statesman, discussed the Jeffersonian doc- 
trine of government, and stated, at length, his opinion 
of the political prospects of the United States. 

Events, happening in more recent years, have served 
to 'revive public interest in these letters. The follow- 
ing extract from one of them is especially worthy of 
earnest perusal. Macaulay says: 

" I am certain that I never wrote a line, and that I 
never, in Parliament, in conversation, or even' on the 
hustings — a place where it is the fashion to court the 
populace — uttered a word indicating an opinion that 
the supreme authority in a State ought to be intrusted 
to the majority of citizens told by the head; in other 
words, to the poorest and most ignorant part of soci- 
ety. I have long been convinced that institutions 
purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty 
or civilization, or both. What happened lately in 
France is an example. In 1848 a pure democracy was 
established there. During a short time there was rea- 
son to expect a general spoliation, a national bank- 
ruptcy, a new partition of the soil, a maximum of 
prices, a ruinous load of taxation laid on the rich for 
the purpose of supporting the poor in idleness. Such 
a system would, in twenty years, have made France as 
poor and barbarous as the France of the Carlovingians. 
Happily the danger was averted. You may think that 
your country enjoys an exemption from these evils. 



MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. 145 

Your fate I believe to be certain, though it is deferred 
by a physical cause. As long as you have a boundless 
extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring 
population will be far more at ease than the laboring 
population of the Old World, and while that is the 
case the Jefferson politics may continue to exist with- 
out causing any fatal calamity. 

" But the time will come when New England will be 
as thickly peojoled as Old England. Wages will be 
as low, and will fluctuate as much, with you as with us. 
You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams, 
and in those Manchesters and Birminghams hundreds 
of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes 
out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly 
brought to the test. Distress everywhere makes the 
laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to 
listen with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it 
is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a 
million while another cannot get a full meal. In bad 
years- there is plenty of grumbling here, and sometimes a 
little rioting. But it matters little. For here the suf- 
ferers are not the rulers. The supreme power is in the 
hands of a class, numerous indeed, but select; of an 
educated class; of a class which is, and knows itself to 
be, deeply interested in the security of property and the 
maintenance of order. Accordingly the malcontents 
are firmly yet gently restrained. The bad time is got 
over without robbing the wealthy to relieve the indi- 
gent. The springs of national prosperity soon begin 
to flow again — work is plentiful, wages rise, and all is 
tranquillity and cheerfulness. I have seen England 
pass, three or four times, through such critical seasons 
as I have described^ 



146 MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. 

" Through such seasons the United States will have 
to pass in the course of the next century, if not in 
this. I seriously apprehend that you will, in some such 
season of adversity as I have described, do things w^hich 
will prevent prosperity from returning; that you will 
act like people who should, in a year of scarcity, de- 
vour all the seed-corn, and thus make the next year 
not one of scarcity, but of absolute famine. There 
will be, I fear, spoliation. The spohation will increase 
the distress. The distress will produce fresh spoliation. 
There is nothing to stop you. Your Constitution is 
all sail and no anchor. As I said before, when a soci- 
ety has entered upon the downward progress, either 
civilization or liberty must perish. Either some Caesar 
or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a 
strong hand, or your Republic will be as fearfully plun- 
dered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth 
century, as the Roman empire was in the fifth, with 
this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged 
the Roman Empire came from without, and that your 
Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within 
your own country, and by your own institutions." 

This is a frightful picture, drawn by the hand of a 
master in word-painting; but, without a doubt, it is 
exaggerated. We recoil w^ith horror from its lurid 
outlines, and the woe and desolation it suggests to the 
mind through the eyes of the imagination; but, in our 
heart, we deny that the description is applicable to us, 
and we must refuse to accept the great historian's 
opinion as a true prophecy of our Republic's impend- 
ing and unavoidable doom. Our denial and refusal 
rest upon the following grounds: 

We question Macaulay's ability to form a correct 



MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. 147 

opinion of the American people. What he knew 
about us was acquired by reading and hearsay. He 
had no practical knowledge of our political or social 
institutions. He made no special study of our people 
from actual observation. He could not familiarize him- 
self with the tone and spirit of the American public. 
He could not thoroughly comprehend our peculiar ne- 
cessities nor the peculiar means adopted by us to meet 
these necessities — the material, moral and political 
forces, by the application of which our country has 
grown great in all the essentials and proper attributes 
of a powerful and illustrious republic. 

Macaulay's opinion of our people, and of our system 
of government, has the defect common to the opinion 
of aristocratic foreigners on this subject. With little 
love for what they are pleased to call " the populace," 
they make this epithet synonymous with ignorance and 
poverty. To this class of critics the melodramatic in- 
cidents of French revolutions, and the burlesque repub- 
licanism of that inconstant people, in the theatrical 
exhibitions of it in 1830 and 1848, afford an easy solu- 
tion of the value of democratic principles, and France 
is made the supreme model of a State where sovereign 
power rests in the hands of the people. 

If the normal condition of France in this respect 
could consistently be considered the normal condition 
of the United States; if the people of that country, in 
all important respects, were similar to our people, then 
the conclusions which Macaulay draws from his prem- 
ises, would be just; we, with him, would doubt the 
stability of democratic government, and seriously ap- 
prehend results quite as disastrous as any which have 
served to make France so unenviably famous in recenti 



148 MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. 

political history. But there is no similarity whatever. 
The condition of France would be necessary before the 
usual results of that condition could.be experienced in 
this country; but to suppose such a thing is to imagine 
a transposition of countries, and a complete metamor- 
phosis of their respective populations. 

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the many character- 
istics in which the American people differ from the 
people he holds up to us as an example, and upon 
whose character and political condition he rests his 
belief that Democracy and the destruction of liberty 
and civilization are synonymous terms. However, we 
will touch upon three elements which, combined, offer 
insurmountable obstacles to the success of Communis- 
tic vagaries in this country, and which will preserve 
the United States from the evil effects of French " pure " 
Democracy, so-called. These elements are Religion — 
the influence of the pulpit, the religious training of the 
masses through an open Bible in free churches; an ele- 
ment immeasurably potent in promoting and conserving 
the moral and social interests of a people. In the next 
place there is the general intelligence of our people: 
Six millions of children in the common schools regulated 
by a system superior to any other in the world; books 
in every household; public libraries in every city, town 
and village; and, chief over all other literary agencies, 
our Press, religious and secular — "the voice of the 
people " — guide, counselor, champion ; free as the air, 
and, like light, diffused everywhere and penetrating all 
things; visiting from day to day, and week to week, 
almost every home in this broad land; explaining to the 
humblest citizens the schemes of the mightiest and the 
plans of the wisest; causing every man to feel that he 



MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. 149 

is a citizen, intimately concerned with the geneiul 
affairs of his country, and, to the extent of his individ- 
uahty, a judge and arbiter of its destiny; on the one 
hand he is taught, by this more than kingly power, the 
truths of the gospel, and learns to respect the man- 
dates of an enlightened Christianity; on the other 
hand rich and poor, old and young, are kept informed 
of passing events, and the minutest incidents in the 
political, commercial, social and literary worlds, come 
under the eye, and are intelligently commented upon. 

Another very important element is the isolated 
situation of our country. It is free from all entangling 
alliances; it is backed by the limitless resources of a 
mighty hemisphere; it labors untrammeled in develop- 
ing science, commerce and the arts; it is untainted by 
the proximity of corrupt governments, and the in- 
fluences of discordant nationalities, and, therefore, 
happily exempted from the ruinous effects, internal 
and external, which have so often deprived France, and 
her neighbors, of the opportunity of fairly testing the 
manhood of true Democracy, even if it were possible 
for these, especially for chronically implacable France, 
to appreciate a free, stable, constitutional government, 
when the whirligig of time gives them opportunity for 
securing such a government. Our liberty and our 
civilization can never be imperiled by forces engen- 
dered in despotism, or that grow out of conditions of 
general ignorance, superstition, and incontinence of 
character, such as are exemplified by the countries 
Macaulay relies upon to prove the worthlessness of 
Democracy. 

Macaulay insists that the vastness and fertility of 
our country are the temporary barriers that interpose 



150 MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. 

themselves between us and our eventual ruin; the 
calamity is absolutely certain, however; it is inexorable 
destiny. Our dreadful fate is sealed, irrevocably! He 
places no value whatever upon the moral causes, to 
which we have alluded, and which, in our opinion, are 
far more potent than the combined physical causes he 
speaks of, for permanently protecting and conserving 
the prosperity of our democratic institutions. 

In the vivid description of the coming discontent 
and mutiny among our artisans and laboring classes, 
Macaulay takes for his pattern the chronically unsatis- 
factory condition of those classes in Europe. 

He ignores completely the differences that charac- 
terize these classes, the European and the American; 
the superior intelligence of the American artisan or 
laborer, his greater advantages, social, financial and 
political; his hardihood, and ready adaptation to his 
surroundings; his deeply rooted love for and clear ap- 
preciation of the benefits of a free and law-consecrated 
government, whose privileges are enjoyed in common, 
and which he desires to see perpetuated for his own sake, 
and for the sake of his posterity. Macaulay's imagina- 
tion transports from the shores of the Old World to 
those of the New, the ghostly specter of Agrarianism. 
Having transformed it by the aid of fancy and sophistry 
into a living American citizen, he stuffs him into a 
blouse, puts a red cap on his head, and a torch into his 
hand, and beholds him hanging our rich men to the 
first convenient lamp-post to the tune of ga ira, and, 
generally speaking, cutting the throats of Liberty and 
Civilization with all the frenzy and devilish dexterity 
of the sans culotte of Robespierre's and Marat's time. 

On this side of the Atlantic, the world has advanced 



MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. 151 

too far to make such retrogression to the dominion of 
barbarism possible. The conservative forces of England, 
bf which Macaulay boasts, are also present in the United 
States, although they are more widely diffused, and 
thereby benefited, because not centered in a para- 
mount class, as is the case in England, having a vast 
and almost impassable chasm between the superior and 
the inferior and subordinated classes. We have seen sea- 
sons of great adversity, but the vigorous manhood of 
our country has been more than a match for these evils, 
and has overcome them all. From all of these adverse 
events golden wisdom has been gained by our people, 
and the future will not fail to profit by the experience 
of the past. 

No matter how viciously liberty and civilization may 
be assailed, the repellant power of justice, truth and 
wisdom, will be sufficient to repel the assault. The 
common sense of the American people will predomi- 
nate. The machinations of the enemies of liberty and 
right will be frustrated. The right of a people to self- 
government is a divine and imperishable right. To 
believe that it will evef* cease to exist, is to believe that 
the world is retrograding, and that, gradually, every ves- 
tige of modern civilization will be obliterated by 
anarchy, and lost in the black chaos of barbarism. No 
such destiny is to be read in the motto-stars of the 
American republic; through every cloud that may tem- 
porarily obscure them, the beautiful legend, '^ Esto 
Perpetual''^ shall continue to shine with steadfast 
splendor. 



RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

fT is alleged that there is an irreconcilable antago- 
nism between Science and Religion ; that only a 
forced and superficial, not a natural and legitimate, 
union of the two is possible ; that each stands upon 
opposite ground ; that in our day they are rivals and 
foes, instead of being friends and co-laborers in a com- 
mon cause. Upon these points much has been said and 
written, and the unprofitable w^ar of words and clash of 
pens knows no abatement. We feel constrained to 
place briefly our own opinion upon record : 

There is no antagonism between true Religion and 
true Science. There is no conflict between them, and 
there can not be. God's revelation of himself in man 
and in nature is in absolute harmony with his equally 
divine spiritual revelation of himself in the Bible. True 
Science is the dutiful, humble handmaid of Religion, 
ever ready and willing to acknowledge her allegiance, 
and to serve her divine mistress; anxious to proclaim 
the heavenly origin of her employer, and to reveal her 
charms, so far as a servant may be permitted to unveil 
them, to the eyes, and to explain them to the understand- 
ing, of humanity. 

Science serves herself best by serving God, and is 
entitled to praise and respect only when she proves her 
right to intimate relationship with Divinity by guard- 
ing, with sensitive affection, the claims of the Supreme 
Being upon the love and reverence of men; and when 
she sternly rejects false teachings, and anathematizes 
those who usurp her place and counterfeit her noble 
speech. 



RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 153 

Genuine Science has never found anything, nor 
demonstrated anything, nor ventured an opinion upon 
anything, that did not demonstrate to the unbiased 
conscience of mankind the truthfulness of the divinely 
inspired Scriptures. Every atom of the material uni- 
verse is vitalized by the omnipresent spirit of the 
Creator. Go where we will His footsteps appear, and 
the unspeakable effulgence of His glory beams upon 
our wondering eyes. The voice of the sea tells of His 
almightiness, and it holds enshrined forever in its bosom 
the indubitable proofs of His existence; the storms 
beat their iron wings against the rocks, and the attrition 
reveals the hieroglyphics of His omniscience ; the dew- 
drop, as it globes itself upon the point of a blade of 
grass, proclaims His infinite power, and the majesty 
thereof, with an eloquence as emphatic as that of the 
brilliant sphere which His hand holds suspended amid 
the rival splendors of the heavens; the great, profound 
heart of Earth throbs for Him only, and her face 
blushes with reverential love at His presence; the blos- 
soming valleys, the harvest-bearing fields, that smile in 
the exuberance of their gladness, teach His truths; the 
hoary mountains rise to do Him honor ; the skies are 
uncurtained by invisible hands, and through the silvery 
shadows that envelop them, toe may gain dim glimpses 
of the unportrayable face of Almighty Love, and a faint 
idea of the ineffable beauty of His celestial handiwork. 
" The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the firm- 
ament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth 
speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There 
is no speech or language where their voice is not heard." 

But more sublimely even than nature manifests Him 
to our senses. He has condescended to reveal Himself 



154 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

to our souls through the Bible. Stone-blind, indeed, 
must be the heart that cannot see His presence in 
every line of it, and His holy, all-quickening spirit on 
every page. In nature. He speaks to us through the 
necessarily inadequate medium of soulless matter; in 
His book we meet Him face to face; He talks as a 
father to his child; we hear every tone and modulation 
of His voice; when He stretches forth His hand we 
feel it resting upon our hearts; there is no missing or 
broken link, no impassable gulf, between us. What 
right, therefore, have we to entertain any doubt of 
Him in any way, or not to give absolute and unques- 
tioning allegiance to His sovereignty, when He has 
condescended to reveal Himself to His creatures 
through the medium of the Sacred Scriptures; when 
genuine Science, devoutly investigating the mysteries 
of nature, reverently acknowledges the supremacy 
and incontestable truth of His revelations in those 
manifestations of His being also; and when won- 
der, admiration, and an awe that is utterly unable 
to express itself, are the emotions that exclusively oc- 
cupy the soul when we contemplate the eternal evi- 
dences of His truth, wisdom, and power ? Should we 
not rely as implicitly on God's exposition of Himself 
in the one case as in the other ? Is not spirit greater 
than matter? Is it not egregious folly, then, is it not 
arrant blasphemy to pervert or to deny the truths of the 
statements made in the Scriptures by holy men under 
the direct inspiration of Heaven ? 

Whosoever does this, places mere human opinion 
above divinely indorsed Truth, and the creature above 
the Creator. 

It is not worth while to pay attention to the vaga- 



RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 155 

ries of pseudo-scientists. Let them float their bubbles 
as they please; they do no harm. To give charlatans 
of this sort audience, is to give them the coveted op- 
portunity tor a display of their gaudy word-mongery, 
and to show off their clap-trap methods of sophistry, 
the end of whieh is a manifestation of their own men- 
tal barrenness, and an exposition, altogether superflu- 
ous, of the hollow cant of skepticism and materialism. 

Faith is all-sufficient to the Christian. It is to him 
an anchor that never drags, because it holds to the 
Rock of Ages. It is a ship made fast by an inde- 
structible chain to the shore of Eternity. It is a sun 
that never sets. It is a star that shines steadfastly, 
and with a glory that increases as the gloom of the 
night grows apace. Christian faith may be reviled, 
denounced, hissed at, spurned, cursed, crucified — never- 
theless, it continues to be what it is, unchangeably. It 
is divine, consequently it is immortal. Its beauty is 
brightened by contrast. The weakness of folly only 
demonstrates its omnipotence more fully. Opposition 
emboldens it; error vindicates it; time deepens, widens, 
exalts it; eternity crowns it. 



POT-POURRI. 

" i^JT is a high, solemn, and ahnost an awful thought," 

c^ says Carlyle, " for every indi vidua?, that his earthly 
influence, which has a commencement here, will never, 
through all ages, were he the meanest of us all, have 
an end." 

Almost an awful thought ! It is an awful thought 
— for it contains the idea of Eternity, and what is more 
inconceivably awful than Eternity ? And yet men act, 
every day of their lives, as if there were no Eternity, no 
Hereafter to this transient Now, and that the influence 
of their existence is bounded by the narrow confines of 
our mortality. 

Every individual's influence, be he of mean or noble 
grade, rich or poor, is at all times exerted for good or 
for evil, directly or indirectly, by the spoken precept 
or the silent yet no less eloquent teaching of personal 
example. This influence gathers drop by drop, rill by 
rill it trickles down the secluded or public paths of 
life, until it becomes, finally, an irresistible current, upon 
whose tide we and others drift and are borne — whence ? 
Ah ! right here we touch upon and shrink from the 
idea of the eternal; here is the awful barrier before 
which the soul must pause, reflect, tremble, hope ! 

What a blissful thought it is that our influence, 
our life, our aspirations, have been like a bright and 
songful stream, flowing through the sunny lands of 
Peace and Memory. The barrier that excludes us, for 
the present, from the great Beyond, will have no terror 
for us. On the other side shines the sun of everlast- 



POT-POURRI. 157 

ing Truth, and we feel that the hand of eternal Love 
will be stretched forth to greet our coming. 

On the contrary, how awful is the thought that the 
baneful influences of our life have formed themselves 
into a river of Death, whose waves are gall, whose 
course is marked by the blight of its poisoned waters, 
and whose voice is the dirge of eternal woe ! 



Some blatant demagogues maintain that " Labor 
should be disenthralled from capital." This is pestif- 
erous nonsense. Labor and capital cannot be sepa- 
rated. They must live and die together. Each has its 
appropriate sphere to fill. They are interdependent. 
It is their discord that must be prevented. Both 
should be disenthralled from envy and clashing inter- 
ests, an enthrallment continually made more perplexing 
and burdensome by malcontents and demagogues, in- 
spired by base and selfish purposes. They should 
rather be taught to know how essentially their inter- 
ests are in common. Labor should be emancipated 
from ignorance, and capital restrained from its ten- 
dency to tyranny. 

" Those who trust us," says George Eliot, " educate 
us ; " and it is likewise true that we educate those who 
trust us. The confidence and the simple faith which 
meet and embrace us, without the shadow of a doubt 
even, give to character an impressibility as sensitive to 
the force of impressions as the surface of a mirror is 
to the light of the sun. 

In course of time such hearts become so thoroughly 
imbued with the color of our own thoughts, and the 
peculiarities that characterize our own disposition, 



158 POT-POURRI. 

that their individual identity is scarcely perceptible. 
They reflect and perpetuate the workings and moods 
of our own soul intuitively and without conscious 
effort. Therefore, how important it is that we should 
be worthy of such a trust — a trust that educates re- 
ciprocally, and whose effects, strange and wonderful as 
they are even in this life, who can conceive in the 
illimitable life that awaits us beyond the boundary of 
the grave ? 

" The every-day cares and duties which men call 
drudgery," says Longfellow, "are the weights and 
counterpoises of the clock of time, giving its pendu- 
lum a true vibration, and its hands a regular motion, 
and when they cease to hang upon the wheels, the pen- 
dulum no longer swings, the hands no longer move, 
the clock stands still." This is as true as it is beauti- 
ful. Every duty of our daily life, though looked upon 
as "drudgery," can be made to yield pleasure, or at 
least, can be robbed of its unpleasant features, by a 
willing and cheerful spirit. The great central idea 
which should give strength and momentum to every 
heart, " doing good," will hallow every means, no mat- 
ter how humble or irksome, necessary to the attain- 
ment of that end. 

The constantly varying moods of the mind color our 
occupations, and we often look upon a certain task as 
drudgery, which at another time, and under other 
circumstances, would be but a pleasing employment. 
Habit will step in as the great pacificator of our vexed 
feelings, and patience, 

" The soul of peace, 
Of all the virtues the nearest kin to heaven," 



POT-POURRI. 159 

will sweeten every toil. We should always consider 
what we are laboring for, and whether our purposes 
are honest and commendable. Having this knowledge, 
we are proof against the " stings and arrows of out- 
rageous fortune," and can always cheerfully answer 
" here," when Duty calls the roll. 



Every drunkard was a sober man once, and his ruin 
is a history. To look upon him, however, as he wallows 
with the swine in a gutter, and scarcely resembling a 
human being, it is hard to believe that he can have 
ever been a sober man. It would seem that a thousand 
years are necessary to bring a human being down to 
this level of debasement, and that the average length 
of life is insufficient for the monstrous development of 
such a horror. Yet there is the awful fact ! Oh, the 
terrible antithesis of such a life ! Oh, the immeasura- 
ble extent of the woe! Oh, the Dead Sea of misery, 
that lies between the black and desolate shore of such 
a creature's Present and the green and smiling shore of 
the distant Might-have-been ! 

The mind cannot grasp the length, the height, the 
depth of such a thought ! The heart can never fathom 
the pathos of it! God help these fallen angels of light, 
once created in His image. 

What a blood-besmeared, insatiable monster Rum is! 
A reviewer, commenting on the official record of homi- 
cides that occurred during one year, in the United 
States, and the compilation of which occupied six 
great columns in solid agate type, suggestively says: 

" Inspection also shows that rum, using the word in 
its derived sense as standing for the whole class of al- 
coholic stimulants, is responsible for more homicides 



160 POT-POURRI. 

than any other one cause. There were two homicides 
on the first day of the year attributed by the compiler 
to rum, and the list ends as it began, with a death that 
came about in a drunken quarrel. Between the first 
day of the year and the last, the reader will find the' 
tracks of rum at least every week and sometimes every 
day, for days in succession. It is noteworthy that, 
during the three summer months, when the number of 
homicides was greatest, there were only twenty-three 
killings that are directly attributed to drinking. There 
were a great many quarrels which resulted fatally to 
one or both of the parties, but it is not alleged of most 
of them that rum was at the bottom. It is not improb- 
able that closer examination would have disclosed the 
fact that there had been drinking." 

Rum is the sateless vampire that sucks the life-blood 
of our people; it is the monstrous agency that drags 
thousands upon thousands into the jaws of hell; it is 
the fire-brand that sets our social fabric on fire; it is 
the demon destroyer of peace and happiness; the cruel 
subverter of law and order; the deadliest foe of vir- 
tue and honor; the Gorgon that is not a myth, (would 
to God that it were!) with the snake's head of Medusa, 
at whose glance hearts are turned to stone, murder 
bares his arm, and strong men shrivel into insanity 
and succumb to a miserable and hopeless death. 

And still the ruin grows. Page after page is added 
to this history of Satan; every word an annihilated 
soul; every sentence punctuated with murder; every 
chapter lurid with the flames of hell; every book the 
wail of a dying nation ! 

A drop of water fell out of a cloud into the sea. 
"Alas ! " it exclaimed, despondingly, " what an insig- 



POT-POURRI. 161 

nificant creature I am in this vast waste of waters; my 
existence is of no concern to the universe; I am almost 
nothing; I am the very least of the works of God ! " 

By some mysterious process the drop of water found 
its way into the interior of a shell, where it lay a long 
time, undergoing a very wonderful change, until, by 
slow degrees, it ripened into a pearl. In due time the 
shell, with its precious contents, was found by a diver, 
and the pearl, after many remarkable vicissitudes, is 
now the most beautiful and the costliest gem in the 
crown of the Persian monarch. 

How aptly this tender fable of the East illustrates 
the power of " little things ! " It teaches us to look 
with loving regard even upon the apparent trifles of 
God's universe. We do not know the mighty force, 
the glorious beauty contained in atoms. Nothing can 
be properly considered insignificant in nature. A par- 
ticle of matter, in its crude form, may seem to be alto- 
gether valueless, but it may become an agent for the 
generation of a living thought, which shall ascend, 
note by note, the majestic diapason of Nature, until it 
shall blend, at last, with the full harmony of the Eter- 
nal Mind. 

The ultimate power of a rain-drop even, is beyond 
the scope of human comprehension, and its tiny orb 
holds mysteries not less wonderful than those of the 
resplendent spheres of heaven which are — 

" Forever singing as they shine, 
The hand that made us is divine." 



*The treasure which a man carries in his mind, can 
never be taken from him. It is an inexhaustible mine, 
from which he can delve precious things in the bright- 
11 



162 POT-POURRI. 

est as well as in the darkest hours of his life. It is 
true that the poverty of our garments, and the lack of 
that exterior gloss by which the superficial eye of the 
world estimates, in a large measure, the value of char- 
acter, are conditions that operate, apparently, unfavora- 
bly upon our material interests; but this is temporary. 
The tranquil beams of a cultivated mind, the glow of 
an earnest heart, the serene beauty of a pure spirit, 
will shine through every adverse circumstance, and will 
secure in due course of time, from intelligent men, hon- 
orable recognition. 

The richest legacy that parents can leave to their 
children is an honest name; the surest riches with 
which they can endow them is the wealth of a thorough 
education — a trained intellect, sanctified to godly uses 
by the chastening and ennobling spirit of Christianity. 

" 'Tis the mind that makes the body rich 
And as the sun breaks through the darkest cloud 
So honor peereth in the meanest habit." 



Emilio Castelar, the Spanish patriot, statesman and 
author, is a man of unique genius and great literary 
power. He possesses the passion, the fire, the pictur- 
esque, artistic mind of the South, and the fervid imag- 
ination that burns like a cloudless July sun. In his 
critical work he lacks cool, calm, evenly balanced 
power; his judgment is carried away by the flood of 
impulse; he becomes a special pleader for his favorite, 
and ceases to be a dispassionate relaterof facts, a grave, 
unbiased historian. 

In his brilliant book " Life of Lord Byron and Other 
Sketches," his opinion of Byron is condensed in the 
following fiery lines: 

" Poet ! mighty poet ! men knew not the impossibil- 



POT-POURRI. 163 

ity of having grand qualities without having also great 
defects. They know not that all extraordinary virtue, 
all surpassing merit, is born of a disproportion between 
human faculties. They know not that the perfect 
sense of hearing has a relation with the imperfect 
sense of vision; and, at times, the perfection of imag- 
ination with the imperfection of conscience." 

Nothing can be more illogical. Are great virtues 
impossible unless they grow out of great vices ? Is 
Discord the parent of Harmony ? Cannot perfection 
exist unless it is counterbalanced by imperfection ? 

Our idea of true greatness embraces an evenly bal- 
anced character, great in all its parts, and moving 
grandly forward toward the accomplishment of some 
great end, the embodiment of serene and lofty harmony. 
Great crimes may be overshadowed by greater genius, 
but the fact is nevertheless deplorable that genius 
should condescend to degrade itself by becoming the 
blind tool of infamy. Where genius is guilty of this, 
the result is an extension of the area of crime, and 
an augmentation of evil. 



" Be noble-minded," says Schiller, " our own heart, 
and not other men's opinions of us, forms our true 
honor." That is to say, if in the sight of God we feel 
that our heart is all right, we need not fear the criti- 
cism of men, nor be anxious concerning their opinion 
as to our motives and actions. 

Many a noble thing is done of which the world is 
ignorant. Many a noble mind shines, unperceived by 
the eye of the world, behind the screen of casual cir- 
cumstance, as the sun shines behind the passing cloud; 
yet its influence for good is felt, notwithstanding the 



164 ' POT-POUERI. 

fact that the source of this beneficence is unkn.own. Be 
good, be right, be true, and you will necessarily be noble- 
minded. Thus you will be brought into direct com- 
munication with God and the Holy Spirit. From these 
will come the blessing you seek, and the only honors 
worth striving for; having these you can serenely and 
safely forego the unstable honor of men's opinions. 



Lord Macaulay considered it "the first rule of all 
writing — that rule to which every other is subordinate 
— that the words used by the writer shall be such as 
most fully and precisely convey his meaning to the 
great body of his readers." 

Simplicity, perspicuity, directness, are the chief 
charms of good writing and speaking. No matter how 
beautiful the words of a speaker or writer may be in 
themselves, if the order of their arrangement is per- 
plexing, they will confuse the perception of hearers or 
readers, and lose one-half of their power. 

All the grand operations of nature are simple, and 
the forces of the mind attain their fullest development 
by the exercise of the same principle. We should be 
able to follow a speaker or a writer in the sublimest 
flights of oratory, or the most brilliant essays of dic- 
tion, without weariness; the height he attains should 
not make him dizzy, and obscure him in clouds of 
vague and abstruse words; he should bear us up on 
the wings of the eagle, the sweep of whose pinions is 
as strong and rhythmic near the sun as it is when he 
leaves his mountain eyrie. The grand and majestic 
things in nature are broad, elemental, and impress 
themselves with direct force upon the soul; the sky, 
the mountains, the ocean, affect us with wonder and 



POT-POURRI. 165 

excite the profoundest emotions of our hearts by their 
simple beauty, and the sense of illimitable power ex- 
pressed without effort. So should it be in writing and 
speaking. Nature should be our standard. All true 
art is simple — to depart from this rule is to lose sight 
of the fundamental principle of Eloquence. 



What is it that men lack most ? It is not talent, 
but purpose; not learned theory, but intelligent appli- 
cation; not complicated machinery, but practical, 
straightforward work; not means to achieve, but the 
iron will to labor. Possessing these, success will fol- 
low. A good purpose must sanctify talent. Theory is 
useless, unless it is tested by application. Where will 
is, the power of achievement is very apt to be; a deter- 
mined will can create the necessary power out of its 
own forces. 

There is so much wasted talent in our day. Men re- 
fuse to confine their gifts and energies to legitimate 
channels; they attempt great things spasmodically, and 
spurn the broad and safe high-roads to success for the 
wilderness paths of the novel and the quicksands of 
the sensational and the inexplicable. 

Stern purpose, loyal devotion, a clear understanding 
of the end to be attained; resolute application, hard 
work, and a cheerful, consecrated spirit, will overcome 
almost every obstacle. Without these qualities talent 
is but of little use to its possessor; it is a flower fated 
to " waste its sweetness on the desert air." 



Epictetus maintained that the substance of philoso- 
phy is contained in the two words, " sustain," and 
"abstain." The words are simple, indeed,, and yet 



166 POT-POURRI. 

they give us the master-key to the treasure-house of 
Philosophy. " Sustain " the true, the good, the beau- 
tiful, wheresoever they appear, in character, in art, in 
nature. Sustain every effort that is made for the 
amelioration of human sorrow, for the promotion of 
knowledge, for the increase and recognition of moral 
excellence, and the consequent increase of human hap- 
piness. Sustain honesty, merit, humility, perseverance 
in the right, good purposes, good achievements, good 
government. Sustain the purity and dignity of your 
soul against all odds; sustain honorable temporal rela- 
tions with your fellow-men; sustain your religious faith 
and your paramount spiritual relations to your Creator. 

"Abstain " from base indulgences, from obscenity 
in deed and thought; abstain from falsehood, from in- 
temperance, from uncharitableness, from envy, from 
slander, from mercenary trickery; abstain from every 
vice that degrades the soul, and soils and humiliates 
your manhood or your womanhood. 

Abstain from the selfish and gloomy moods which 
cloud the eternal sunshine of Heaven, and prevent the 
eyes of your heart from seeing the goodness of God, 
His loving kindness to every creature, or which are cal- 
culated to obscure your perception of the beauty and 
harmony of nature. The constant practice of the 
meaning of these two little words will make you a 
Christian philosopher. 



A prominent writer, whose name has frequently ap- 
peared in the AtlcDitic, takes occasion to say: "Per- 
haps it is well for all of us that we should live mostly 
on the surfaces of things, and should play with life, to. 
avoid taking it too hard." 



POT-POURRI. 167 

This, to use no harsher term (though it deserves a 
stronger epithet), is a foolish sentiment. The person 
who " plays with life," plays with the most precious of 
all things, and runs the risk of ruining himself for 
time and eternity. That any thinking man can look 
upon life as a plaything, is a source of astonishment 
to us, and presupposes a condition of soul beyond our 
comprehension. Yet this flippancy is the great evil 
that permeates our society as a whole, bringing thou- 
sands to a wretched end. 

Life is a very serious matter, even in this world, and 
inconceivably serious when we reflect, even for one 
moment, upon its inseparable connection with eternity. 
*' Living mostly on the surface, and playing with life, to 
avoid taking it too hard," is an unmanly, a cowardly sen- 
timent. It is a debasement of the high, spiritual stand- 
ard which men, endowed with immortal souls, should 
set up for themselves. It is the voluptuary's creed; it 
is the wordling's shibboleth; it is a false, heathenish 
quibble, unworthy of this Christian age. It should be ex- 
punged from the vocabulary of all who wish to serve God 
and do their duty as honest men and women should do. 



A recent writer endeavors to palliate the extraordi- 
nary lapses of some men and women of genius from 
the accepted standard of morality, by the following 
sentiment: 

" Genius, in all time, has seemed to assume the right 
to be a law unto itself, and we have in this case another 
instance of the difficulty of holding exceptionally gifted 
natures to the conventionalities that are the welcome 
safeguard of less daring souls." 

It should be remembered that much is required of 



168 POT-POURRI. 

him to whom much is given, and that people of genius 
have no license to sin. Their neglect of the " conven- 
tionalities " of society does little harm, but they must 
conform to its moralities. No amount of genius will 
excuse licentiousness. God is no respecter of persons. 
People endowed with genius are especially responsible 
to the Divine Dispenser of all good gifts, for the 
proper use of their genius. Genius is a great, an ab- 
solute power — it can be made an angel of blessing or 
a demon of destruction. Great and fearful, indeed, is 
the responsibility of men and women of genius ! 



A sturdy and wise old Norse king, being asked what 
his religion was, answered: "Ask my wife. Our women 
are nearer to God than we are." In Bestowing this 
well-merited compliment on women, the sententious 
Norseman probably failed to feel the force of the cen- 
sure upon his own sex, which his words contain. 

There is not the slightest reason for any difference 
in the relationship of men and women to the Divine 
Author of all. There will be no discrimination on ac- 
count of sex in the day of judgment. Each soul will 
be judged upon its own merits or demerits by the all- 
embracing and invariable standard of God's law. It is 
as much the man's duty to be a Christian as it is the 
woman's; they are equally responsible, and are bound 
by the same divine obligations. No family can enjoy 
complete peace and harmony where there is lack of 
unison, in deed or in spirit, in the religious work and 
aspirations of the husband and wife. 

If the man, by nature, is more sinful than the woman, 
his reasoning powers are greater, and his will is 
stronger — why can he not exercise these qualities to 



POT-POUKKI. 169 

their full capacity and, by making a greater effort, 
place himself, in this important respect, by the side of 
his wife, the so-called " weaker vessel ? " Why should 
the shining crown of Christian virtues and graces be 
reserved for the brow of man's helpmeet, when its 
luster is equally becoming to the brow of the husband 
and master, and was intended to be so ? Wherever 
there is disparity between the moral and religious 
status of husband and wife, domestic felicity has but 
precarious and brief existence. 



The poet, by the clairvoyance of his inspiration, discov- 
ers far more readily than persons less gifted, the well- 
springs of human feeling. By the aid of his marvel- 
ous inner consciousness he traces the subtle connections 
of cause and effect; hence he becomes a divinelv in- 
spired oracle. He is empowered to promulgate great 
truths; and by a touch of his golden wand he dis- 
solves many of the errors and superstitions that still 
darken the mind of the age. 

Tennyson, interpreting the secret causes of religious 
persecution, says in his Queen 3IaTy: 

When men are tossed 
On tides of strant^e opinion, and not sure 
i Of their own selves, they are wroth with their own selves 
And thence with others. Then, who lights the faggot? 
Not the fall faith, no, bat the lurkmg doubt. 

It is customary to consider persons, moved by " holy 
wrath" to burn heretics, sincere in their motives; but, 
according to the poet's interpretation, they are not 
moved by their faith as much as they are by the fear that 
the " heretics' " opinion may, after all, be the true one, 
and all their own tenets false. 



170 POT-POURRI. 

Richelieu's remark, '' there is no such word as fail," is 
certainly true in principle, though not always literally 
true. Men may fail in accomplishing U wicked object. 
They are chagrined at the failure which, in its result, 
becomes a benefit to others. But the men whose 
attempts at wickedness were frustrated never fail in 
one thing, that is — in diminishing their own happiness; 
they are assured of the approbation of their master, 
Satan. 

The man whose aims are lofty, whose desires are 
worthy and commendable, may also fail to see them 
accomplished. He may never secure a tangible result; 
in men's eyes he is, as the saying goes, " a failure " — 
but, what an inexhaustible source of good this man's 
apparent failures may be to himself and to the world, 
after all! How tlie Beautiful may blossom from the 
dust of his despair! How the harps of the angels may be 
resounding in his praise in the temples of the skies, 
though the dull ear of our humanity is unable to hear 
the heavenly peans! Who shall distinguish truly 
between failures and successes in tliis probationary 
life ? Plow many a so-called Failure here may meet our 
wondering gaze in the eternal Beyond a sun-bright, 
crowned Success! 



"As for my plan of not sparing myself," said Freder- 
ick the Great, " I confess it the same as before. The 
more one nurses one's self the more feeble and delicate 
does the body become. My trade requires toil and 
activity, and both my body and my mind must adapt 
themselves to their duty. It is not necessary that I 
should live, hut it is necessary that I should act. I have 
always found mj'^self the better for this method. How- 



POT-I'OUKKI, 171 

ever, I do not prescribe it for any one else, and am con- 
tent to practice it myself." 

No character in history is so remarkably unique, so 
intensely peculiar, as the old war-king of Prussia. In 
spite of many blemishes which darken his Ufe, and the 
fact that he was guilty of many acts that provoke our 
execration, his life and character are a fruitful study to 
those who find, in the dissection of human nature, con- 
stant employment, for the critical faculty of the mind. 

There is practical wisdom in the old hero's motto : 
" It is not necessary that I should live, but it is necessary 
that I should act." It is action that makes us worthy 
of life. Life without action is a contradiction. The 
value of life consists in the opportunities afforded for 
action. He that avails himself of these opportunities, 
and by the healthy exercise of his faculties makes him- 
self constantly the author of good and noble actions, 
reaps the full harvest of his existence, and establishes 
his claim to earthly eminence and an immortal reward 
hereafter. 



How saddening is the remembrance of our lost days! 
How dark the shadow they throw upon the meditations 
of our hearts! Even the lono-est life is but as a laub- 
ble upon the stream, or as an echo dying among the 
hills. What can be more precious than our days? 
They contain the power that can fit the soul for its 
higher life of immortality beyond the grave, the bliss- 
ful consummation of every holy ideal; they contain, 
also, the power that shall hurl us from the walls of 
Heaven into the abyss prepared from the beginning of 
the world for the fallen angels and the ministers of 
Darkness. 



172 POT-POURRI. 

O, most precious days! How we should cherish 
them, and hug them closely to our hearts, and make them 
yield for us the divine harvest of love — but how fear- 
fully we neglect them, how prodigally we waste them! 
How many a heavenly deed we might have done by 
using but one lost day well, and yet, ask your own con- 
science, and it will tell you, remorsefully, that you 
have lost hundreds of these precious jewels! A¥ell has 
the poet expressed the sacred regret we feel for a " lost 
day:" 

Who 's seen my day? 

'Tis gone away, 

Nor left a trace 

In any place. 

If I could only find 

Its footfall in some mind — 

Some spirits' waters stirred 

By wand of deed or word — 

I should not stand at shadowy eve 

And for my day so grieve and grieve. 



